
THE I 
PRINCESS 
AND THE CLOWNS 

JEAN-JOSE FRAPPA 












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/ 

THE PRINCESS 
AND THE CLOWNS 

BY 

JEAN-JOSE FRAPPA 

Translated, from the French by 

Marie Louise Swinburne/ 



NEW YORK 

DUFFIELD AND COMPANY 


1924 


P/,3 

ft*'* 

c*V^ z 


Copyright, 1924, by 
Duffield & Company 


©C1A807593 


Printed in U. S. A. 


K 


OCT 31 *24 


THE PRINCESS 
AND THE CLOWNS 



THE PRINCESS AND 
THE CLOWNS 


CHAPTER I 

We are, in truth, living in an epoch that is 
strangely chaotic, but I am not one of those 
who curse and condemn it hopelessly as being 
pitiless, disastrous and dull, for it possesses, 
in my eyes, the rare merit of having, by a 
series of catastrophies and calamities assur¬ 
edly regrettable in themselves, resuscitated that 
charming goddess whose adepts had no longer 
any way of honoring her; I refer to “Ad¬ 
venture.” 

This epoch has first permitted several peace¬ 
ful citizens to become heroes, to which rank 
they never thought themselves destined; it has 
moreover, brought a certain number of individ¬ 
uals out of immutable and monotonous sit¬ 
uations into which blind fate had plunged them, 
and in which they had prepared themselves to 
be bored for the rest of their lives, prey to that 
3 


4 


THE PRINCESS 


malady called neurasthenia which grows out of 
the impossibility of the unforseen which is the 
evil of organized society. And, by acting in 
this way, it has performed an act of piety. 

I know that a great number of my readers 
will not share my opinion and that, if I may 
hope for the approbation of people formerly 
poor who have become rich, I may anticipate 
also the reproaches and maledictions of the 
former rich who have become poor. But I care 
not, being persuaded that the latter do not ex¬ 
press by their lamentations the real sentiments 
of their souls, and that they have, on the com 
trary, found once more, in the condition into 
which they have been cast by the world-war 
followed by the downfall of Russian capital, 
the true joy of living, in learning at last to 
know on the one hand regret, which is really 
nothing but the retrospective enjoyment of 
the wordly goods the full value of which they 
did not formerly appreciate; and on the other 
hand hope, the anticipated enjoyment of those 
who aspire toward acquirement. 

However this may be, and in order not to 
begin a sterile polemic of which the first effect 
would be to disgust those who had planned to 


AND THE CLOWNS 


5 


read this book, let us establish simply and with¬ 
out comment the rebirth of adventure at a time 
when everything seemed to presage the ex¬ 
treme classification of people, ideas, talents 
and theories. 

Never, in truth, has one seen so many mys¬ 
terious disappearances or unexpected returns, 
astonishing downfalls and prodigious promo¬ 
tions, obscure births and non-certified deaths, 
in fact, such things as make the registrars, men 
who are usually so harmoniously well-balanced, 
lose their heads. 

From this are drawn a bewildering series of 
romances still unknown to the public, for their 
unlikelihood has made the boldest writers draw 
back, for truth knows no limits when it puts 
on the rags of fiction. 

As for me, who know not how to imagine 
and consequently feels no jealousy as an author 
when faced by the fancies of human destiny 
and the fantastic blows of fate, I do not hesi¬ 
tate to undertake to-day the recital of a curi¬ 
ous story, of which I guarantee the authenticity 
at the risk of provoking the protestations and 
contradictions of the little kingdom of George- 
via, friend of France. 


6 


THE PRINCESS 


The heroine of this story was the most 
gracious Princess Olga, second cousin of his 
Majesty the Czar Nicholas II. 

Daughter of the commander in chief of the 
Cossacks of Adour, the Grand Duke Alex¬ 
ander Dimitrievitch, who died shortly before 
the war, the Princess Olga had managed, 
thanks to great energy, intelligence and cour¬ 
age, to flee from Russia with her mother, the 
Grand-Duchess Marie Nicolasvna and a few of 
their followers, at the moment when the Bol¬ 
shevik disturbance was sweeping away ancient 
society. Extensive investments, previously 
made in foreign countries, assured the two 
ladies, if not the pompous life of former times, 
at least a fortune, permitting them to hold their 
rank in the world, and even to help a certaiin 
number of noble refugees less favored than 
themselves. 

They had first taken refuge in Sweden, but 
the Grand-Duchess Marie, who was a nice 
plump lady both heedless and jovial, adoring 
light reading, vodka and Corona cigars, was not 
long in tiring of the high society that she found 
much too cold and where her rather free man¬ 
ners brought her a stiff reception. She had 


AND THE CLOWNS 


7 


then taken her daughter to England, but, soon 
shocked by that court so democratic in its ten¬ 
dencies, she had, at last, decided to establish 
herself in Paris, where there exist numerous 
clans of fashionable men thirsting for the 
chance of calling someone “My Lord” or 
“Your Highness,” and elegant women, who, 
being the daughters of big industrial magnates, 
and having by marriage acquired aristocratic 
names, feel in their plebeian legs the keen de¬ 
sire to make courtesies. 

Marie Nicolaevna was perfectly happy, 
spending her time at receptions, teas, artistic 
sorees, relating untiringly the moving vicis¬ 
situdes of her escape, during which, a moujik, 
filled with good intentions but wishing to pro¬ 
cure some democratic satisfaction, had stipu¬ 
lated, as a return for having helped the fugi¬ 
tives across a river, that the Duchess kiss him 
on both cheeks. 

“And he had a frightful beard, my dear.” 

But if her mother spent agreeable and care¬ 
free days, on the contrary Princess Olga Alex- 
androwna was bored and put up badly with 
her new environment. 

She was, in 1920, at the time when the as- 


8 


THE PRINCESS 


tonishing events that I am going to relate to 
you took place, a young girl of twenty-two 
years of age, tall and slender, with a face that 
was charmingly framed by fluffy blonde hair. 
Into her large blue eyes that had a sweet and 
far-away look, sometimes crept the shadow of 
a nostalgic dream. She had a noble and lan¬ 
guorous bearing, a kind although slightly 
haughty expression, and a tired smile, that 
smile of etiquette, behind which is hidden, enig¬ 
matical and alluring, the soul of little prin¬ 
cesses. 

Although of a fairly even disposition, she 
had, nevertheless, little angry outbursts of 
short duration, and, in spite of her generous im¬ 
pulses, spoke occasionally in a harsh and cutting 
way to her inferiors, when she imagined that 
they failed her in any respect. Romantic and 
sentimental, she often fell into long dreamy 
reveries, overpowered by thoughts of which she 
never divulged the secret to the Grand Duchess, 
her mother, who was annoyed by her far-away 
meditations. But when she caught herself al¬ 
lowing her imagination to wander, she blushed 
and called herself sharply to account, for this 


AND THE CLOWNS 


9 


languidness seemed to her unworthy of a per¬ 
son of her rank. 

In short, one could discover in Princess Olga 
all the physical and moral signs of an ardent, 
impulsive personality, in love with life, but un¬ 
ceasingly restrained by prejudices of caste and 
the profound conviction of being modelled of 
other clay than the ordinary run of mortals. 

She did not delight in the fact of her imperial 
origin, no, she even frequently deplored it, but 
how could she help it? It was something that 
must be accepted with all its consequences. 

Please do not tax her with pride and haughti¬ 
ness, no one, on the contrary, aimed at greater 
simplicity; only her simplicity was that of a 
goddess preoccupied with not frightening the 
ephemeral race of men. 

Therefore, Olga Alexandrowna was bored. 
She regretted her former life, the gorgeous re¬ 
ceptions at the Court, the reviews at which she 
figured on horseback by her father’s side, the 
honors and above all the prerogatives of her 
rank, which compelled all heads, even the most 
rebellious, to bow as she passed. She suffered 
when she had to mix in a crowd, and was frank¬ 
ly astonished when she went out on foot not 


10 THE PRINCESS 

to see the policemen stop the traffic as she went 
by. 

What are the gods when they no longer com¬ 
mand the thunder for their adoration? She 
dreamed of an early restoration, refused obsti¬ 
nately to believe in the death of the Imperial 
family, and, turn by turn, hung her tenacious 
hopes on the generous souls who proclaimed 
that they would shortly crush out bolshevism: 
Koltchak, Denikine, Wrangel or others. 

But, let us get on with our story. 


I told you just now that the Princess Olga 
was of a kindly and generous nature; she 
proved it by interesting herself with meritor¬ 
ious ardor in all the Russian refugees whose 
misery was brought to her attention, or 
who made an appeal to her heart. Leaving her 
mother to discreetly help the aristocratic “emi¬ 
gres,” she did not hesitate to penetrate into the 
most sordid hovels, to bring to her house the 
most uncleanly children, in order to give them 
the proper care, to dress them, or to take them 
for automobile trips into the country. She pat¬ 
ronized a hospital and visited the sick. De- 


AND THE CLOWNS 


11 


sirous of encouraging all kinds of activities and 
of proving her spirit of solidarity, she never 
missed any exhibition of Moscovite painters 
or any new Russian ballet, and, if she learned 
that one of her compatriots was figuring in a 
theatrical performance of any kind, she hast¬ 
ened there to applaud him, whether it was at 
the Opera or in the most modest “cafe-con- 
cert.” 

That is why having heard one day that 
Michalis and Partner, two extraordinary 
clowns whose act was attracting all Paris to 
the Olympia, must be originally from Russia, 
she hastened to reserve the stage box in that 
big music-hall for the very next matinee. 


Really, the success of Michalis and Partner 
fully justified itself, and for reasons entirely 
different from those which usually bring suc¬ 
cess to the eccentric Americans or Englishmen 
who make those entirely unexpected hits. 

The former was a violinist whose virtuosity 
and genius in improvisation astonished musi¬ 
cians of the highest repute; the latter, an im¬ 
personator with moving face and vivid, pre- 


12 


THE PRINCESS 


cise gestures. Both of them possessed, each 
in his own way, the creative gift and, with¬ 
out scenery, playing alternately against a back¬ 
ground of white and black material, without 
change of costumes, almost without accessories, 
they held the entire hall under their spell, mov¬ 
ing the two thousand spectators with the same 
thrills, making them experience, turn by turn, 
the same sentiments of sadness, pity, love, or 
enthusiasm. 

Michalis was above medium height, his face 
with its clean-cut features appeared distin¬ 
guished, the make-up only serving to accentuate 
its characteristics, a high forehead, prominent 
arched eyebrows which shaded grave, imperi¬ 
ously attractive eyes that never laughed, prom¬ 
inent cheek-bones, hollow cheeks and full down- 
curving lips. An immovable face, undeniably 
handsome, but drawn by sickness or suffering, 
and in which one might have quickly lost inter¬ 
est, if, in that bluish shade between the eye¬ 
brows and the cheek-bones, there had not been 
that dark bewitching flame, that penetrating 
glance, through which passed without one be¬ 
ing able to discover by what magic, all passions, 
all sorrows and all joys. It did not consist of 


AND THE CLOWNS 


13 


the “expression.” No. That word can hardly 
be used when speaking of a face or a glance 
that does not change, but showed, successive 
projections of a strong, moving thought. . . . 
Yes, that was it exactly; two eyes like those of 
a fakir, casting a spell over a number of in¬ 
dividuals, fascinating them and imposing upon 
them a dream-like revery. At that time, I had 
frequently been to see Michalis; I had been 
caught under that hallucinating spell of his 
glance in whatever section of the hall I hap¬ 
pened to be seated, and I could find no other 
explanation for the discomfort, not lacking in 
charm however, that this impassible clown 
caused me with his blanched face appearing out 
of the rufiled collar of black muslin above a 
black satin costume. 

As for his comrade, who had no other name 
than Partner, he presented a complete contrast 
to Michalis. Shorter, thick-set, dressed in 
white satin, he had the strange dark head of a 
Tartar, a trifle too large for his slim body, and 
long arms terminated by bony hands. 

If the first was total immobility, the second 
was the essence of activity. Everything moved 
in his flat face, the thick tufted eyebrows, the 


14 


THE PRINCESS 


small bright eyes, the nostrils of his flattened 
nose, the wide-cut mouth and the flexible mus¬ 
cles of his cheeks. 

The “act” on the program consisted of 
Michalis and Partner playing several scenes to¬ 
gether, alternating with musical selections 
which Michalis gave by himself. In their 
scenes, which were very simple, while the first 
improvised a sort of an overture the second 
commenced tracing in space with his brown 
hands on the background of the white curtain, 
imaginary decorations which the audience fin¬ 
ished by really seeing, so precise were the 
clown’s gestures. Then began the plot, in 
which Partner impersonated all the characters. 
For instance they gave a scene of family life. 
Near the window, the old grandmother was 
stitching on the sewing-machine, a young girl 
at the other end of the room was practising on 
the piano, w T hile the children played in the 
centre of the floor on their hands and knees. 

Michalis imitated, turn by turn, on his violin, 
the different noises, and one heard the hum of 
the machine, the running of the scales on the 
piano, the laughter of the children, their dis¬ 
putes, the cuckoo clock striking the hours and 


AND THE CLOWNS 15 


the cried of the street-venders outside. Part¬ 
ner, sometimes in one spot, sometimes in an¬ 
other, imitated the old short-sighted woman 
guiding her thread with difficulty, or threaten¬ 
ing the children with a whip, the little girl ap¬ 
plying herself to her practising, sticking her 
tongue out slightly, making faces as she exe¬ 
cuted the finger exercises on the key-board, the 
squabbles of the children pulling one another’s 
hair, and the house-dog intervening in the dis¬ 
pute. 

Suddenly the drama burst forth, brutal and 
rapid. One heard a great noise from the crowd 
outside, and harsh cries and then the father 
of the family bursts into the room, crazed and 
breathless. He quickly closes the door, pushes 
the bolts, and barricades it to resist the onrush 
from outside; alas, all in vain. The door is 
smashed to pieces, a commissioner of the 
Soviets enters followed by red soldiers who 
stab the unfortunate people with their bayo¬ 
nets, strangle the grandmother, throw the chil¬ 
dren out of the window and set fire to the 
house. 

And Partner, transforming his face with dis¬ 
concerting rapidity, acting one character, and 


16 


THE PRINCESS 


placing the other by gestures in front of him, 
imitated the terror of the father, the cold 
cruelty of the commsisioner, and the sanguin¬ 
ary rage of the soldiers, filling the entire stage 
himself, while the violin cried, howled, wept, 
wailed and railed. It was incredible, and the 
audience wildly applauded these astonishing 
artists. 

Different scenes followed this one, some¬ 
times comic, sometimes melancholy: a peasant 
in the clutches of a custom-house officer, a de¬ 
spairing man throwing himself into the water 
and whose body might be seen floating in the 
current; a poor wretch dying of hunger and 
hesitating to steal a loaf from the front of a 
bakery, and many others that it would take too 
long to enumerate here. 

Between times, as I have already told you, 
Michalis stood in front of the black curtain 
from which it was hard to distinguish his cos¬ 
tume—a little spot-light projected from the 
prompter’s box, illuminating only his blanched 
face and flashing eyes—and improvised on the 
violin or the guitar, strange melodies of real 
artistic quality. 

Such was, briefly described, the act of the 


AND THE CLOWNS 


17 


two clowns. I fear I have not been able in 
words to express its entire originality. One 
analyses with difficulty those fleeting impres¬ 
sions, the sublime work of those who create 
such ephemeral beauty out of musical vibra¬ 
tions, a gesture, a glance or a twitching of the 
face. These magicians are perhaps the only 
real artists, and that is why doubtless we need 
so many phrases to describe incompletely what 
they express in the space of that one intense 
moment during which they give out their whole 
emotion so that it pours out over their audience. 


The Princess Olga Alexandrowna came 
therefore one afternoon to the Olympia, prop¬ 
erly escorted by General Kameniski and Count¬ 
ess Orchapoff who, between them, constituted 
the military and civil house of the Grand Duch¬ 
ess, and they all took their places in the right- 
hand stage box. The program, admirably ar¬ 
ranged, during which acrobats, dancers, equilib¬ 
rists and comic singers succeeded each other, 
interested her greatly, but she waited with 
childish impatience for the “hit” of the show, 
the act of Michalis and Partner—-and when, on 


18 


THE PRINCESS 


the illuminated signs, placed pn either side of 
the stage, appeared the red number announcing 
this part of the program, she caught herself 
showing her pleasure by an exclamation, just 
like the crowd with which the hall was filled. 

The lights were extinguished, the curtain 
raised, and on a black background appeared 
the blanched face of Michalis. At this vision 
the Princess was shaken by a quick shiver, in¬ 
explicable, but so violent that her attentive 
lady-in-waiting hastened to replace on her 
shoulders the cloak that she had, on sitting 
down, thrown on the back of her chair. 

Olga thanked the Countess with a smile and 
began to follow with passionate interest the 
playing of the black clown who gave as a pre¬ 
lude the grand air of Pagliacci, in which he 
rendered with his bow the broken laugh mixed 
with sobs. 

Then the white clown entered, the foot¬ 
lights became bright, the shadow curtain dis¬ 
appeared, and the young Princess felt the sense 
of discomfort that had come over her gradu¬ 
ally fading away. But during the performance 
of the first great scene that I described to you 
just now, she paid no attention to Partner’s 


AND THE CLOWNS 


19 


acting, being unable to take her eyes from the 
face of Michalis, who fine profile, especially 
the brow and nose, recalled to her vaguely an¬ 
other profile, that of a young man whose photo¬ 
graph was in her room. But there the resem¬ 
blance ceased, “the other one” not having deep- 
set eyes, hollow cheeks and the bitter mouth of 
the musical clown. Nevertheless, during the 
space of a few minutes, a rush of memories sub¬ 
merged her soul and plunged her into a sad 
and melancholy frame of mind. 

A tumult of applause announced the end of 
the sketch and brought her back to the sense of 
reality. Partner disappeared, the black cur¬ 
tain spread once more its heavy folds at the 
back of the stage, and Michalis advanced near 
the foot-lights, tuning his violin while casting 
his eyes over the spectators with an impressive 
glance. 

It was then that the incident happened, the 
result of which was to have such great and ex¬ 
traordinary consequences. 

The black clown, while placing against his 
neck the base of his instrument, turned his 
head slightly to insure the stability of the lat¬ 
ter with his chin. He found himself then fac- 


20 


THE PRINCESS 


ing the stage-box, where the young girl was 
leaning forward, and suddenly he was seen to 
stagger; his right hand, already raised, let the 
bow fall and clutched at his ruffled collar trying 
to loosen it and, for the first time he lowered 
his eyelids. 

There was a movement of emotion in the 
hall, and already Partner, who was standing be¬ 
hind a wing, thinking that his comrade was ill, 
ran up just as Michalis, whose face seemed sud¬ 
denly more emaciated, pulled himself together, 
picked up his bow and calming the audience 
with a gesture, started the prelude with a hand 
trembling with emotion. 

Contrary to his custom, he did not cast the 
sombre fire of his eyes over the hall, but fixed 
his glance on Olga Alexandrowna, and every¬ 
one understood that he was going to play for 
her. 

The little Princess, embarrassed by this look 
and a trifle ashamed, for she felt herself the 
centre of attraction, wished to get up in order 
to withdraw to the back of the box or even to 
leave the hall, but a mysterious force nailed 
her to her chair; she remained there as if fas- 


AND THE CLOWNS 21 

cinated, incapable of making the slightest move¬ 
ment. 

Then, under the vibrant bow of the strange 
clown, the violin began to play a very slow air, 
which none who had attended the former shows 
of Michalis had ever heard, a melody, grave 
and nostalgic, the echo of a grief-laden soul. 

At the very first notes, Olga’s face became 
intensely pale; she now looked with fear at the 
chalky face turned toward her. At last, after 
a few minutes, the young girl was seen to pull 
herself up with an effort, wave her hands in 
the air and fall back with a great cry. 

Some people got up, wondering what had 
happened, others ran toward the aisles, the 
doctor in charge broke through the crowd and 
penetrated into the box, while the manager of 
the music-hall, who happened to be present, 
hastened to re-establish order, saying to the 
audience who crowded into the lobby; “It is 
nothing. A little faintness.” 

Michalis, impassive, still played with an 
ardor that was almost mystic. 

The Countess Orchapoff and the General 
Kameniski carried Princess Olga off to her 
carriage by supporting her under her arms. 


22 


THE PRINCESS 


She had recovered from her fainting spell, but 
was still shaken by a nervous trembling. The 
performance, disturbed for a moment, con¬ 
tinued without another interruption. 

The frequenters of the hall scarcely noticed 
that Michalis and Partner considerably short¬ 
ened their act on that day. 


CHAPTER II 

In the drawing room of her little “Villa 
Said,” crowded with large armchairs, settees 
and lounges, into which at any time she would 
sink wailing, the Grand Duchess hovered 
around her daughter, who had scarcely yet re¬ 
covered from her emotion. 

“Well, my pretty one, are you going to tell 
me what has happened to you? Must I really 
drag the words from you by /sheer force? 
Come now, this is ridiculous! Am I not your 
mother?” 

Marie Nicolaevna had banished Russian 
from her house, not wishing, for anything in 
the world, to use the same language as those 
ignoble bolshevists, Mr. . . . Prenine. . . Les- 
tine, Mr...Krosky, Rosky, Mr. . . Brassine, 
whose names she pretended to mispronounce. 

23 


24 THE PRINCESS 

Olga, annoyed by this maternal trepidation, 
replied: 

“Nothing happened to me, Mother, I assure 
you. I had a slight giddy spell, that’s all!. . . 
probably on account of the heat. Now its all 
over.” 

“A slight giddy spell!. . . She faints and she 
calls that a slight giddy spell!. . . . No, no, there 
is something else that you are hiding from me !” 

“But what on earth do you think can have 
happened to me?” 

“How do I know? You are always so se¬ 
cretive. Anyhow, one cannot get upset without 
a reason, especially you who are so strong. 
And, what’s more, in a music-hall, to make a 
show of yourself! Besides, I see by your ap¬ 
pearance that you are still quite unnerved. . . 
Isn’t she, Orchapoff ?. . . Come, my dear, tell 
me quickly! I’m waiting. 

“Once more, Mother. ...” 

“All right, all right! If you don’t want to 
talk, I won’t insist. I know very well that you 
have not the slightest confidence in me, and that 
you find me too stupid to tell me your thoughts, 
your pleasures or your troubles.” 

“Oh!” 



AND THE CLOWNS 25 


“You consider me to be exactly like a child, 
in spite of the energy I showed during our 
flight!. . . Oh !. . . my heart is indeed heavy, 
Olga, that you should grieve me in this man¬ 
ner!” 

The Princess shrugged her shoulders slight¬ 
ly. It was the eternal scene starting over again. 

Marie Nicolaevna, whose childish soul could 
not follow a serious idea for five minutes at 
a time, and who left to her daughter the care 
of managing their daily affairs, continually felt 
the imperative need of reproaching the latter, 
under no matter what pretext, for her own 
nonchalance and light characteristics. And this 
generally ended in floods of tears easily ap¬ 
peased, and followed then, for no reason what¬ 
soever, by peals of laughter. To accomplish 
this, it sufficed for Olga to take her mother’s 
head between her hands, kiss her on the brow 
and say: 

“Come, little Mother, why do you torment 
yourself in this way? You know very well that 
I love you tenderly, and that I have the great¬ 
est admiration for your good sense. It is all 
of no importance whatever, just something 
about which I think it useless to worry you. 


26 


THE PRINCESS 


But rest assured that in case of anything seri¬ 
ous, I shall never fail to have recourse to your 
wisdom.” 

The Grand Duchess then swallowed her tears 
and they talked of other things. 

But, to-day, Olga was too preoccupied to ac¬ 
complish the habitual rite; therefore, she re¬ 
mained pensive in her arm-chair. Seeing 
which, Marie Nicolaevna decided of her own 
accord to stop the sobs that shook her plump 
frame. But it was only to start off again on 
another subject, and to begin an apology for 
herself, which was one way of finding consola¬ 
tion. 

“I am quite sure that this abominable clown 
frightened you. Kameniski told me that he 
dared to look at you with most uncalled-for in¬ 
sistence, didn’t you General?” 

Kameniski and the,Countess Orchapoff, who 
stood respectfully in a corner of the drawing¬ 
room, chimed in with her. 

“And that upset you? Ah! you have no 
nerves, my child, allow me to tell you. Hap¬ 
pily I did not show such weakness at the time 
of our escape. If I had fainted when that 
frightful moujik forced me to embrace him, 


AND THE CLOWNS 


27 


what would have become of us, I ask you? 
Isn’t it true, General? Instead of that, I did 
not resist. I restrained the keen desire I had 
to horsewhip the insolent creature and, to save 
us all, I kissed his horrible beard which must 
have been full of lice. I did not get ill, al¬ 
though he smelt like a...a...What is the 
name of the husband of the goat in French, 
Orchapoff?” 

“Le bouc, Madame.” 

“That’s it; he smelt like a ‘bouc.’ Ah! I 
have more character than you, Olga, thanks be 
to God, although you may not think so. That 
is what the poor Czar Nicholas used to say: 
‘Marie, you must have a great deal of char¬ 
acter to be able to hide it so well.’ And he 
knew what he was talking about! Whereas 
you! just because a miserable clown dares to 
look at you insolently. . .Ah! if we were only 
in Russia, back in the time of the Empire, I 
swear to you, he would leave this very night for 
Siberia. . . But I shall telephone immediately 
to Police Headquarters, for I am sure he is a 
bolshevist, an ‘eye’ as they call them now.” 

She was on the point of getting up, but 
Princess Olga, anxious to stem the flood of 


28 


THE PRINCESS 


words, and feeling that things were going bad¬ 
ly, decided to shake off her silence. 

“Calm yourself, little Mother, I can assure 
you that this man has nothing to do with my 
sick spell. If it had been that, I would have 
told you so, and I would have appealed to your 
influence to have him chastised.” 

“But then,” cried the Grand Duchess pass¬ 
ing quickly to another feeling, “but then, you 
really are ill. Orchapoff, notify the Doctor. 
Great Heavens, my child is ill. Have them pre¬ 
pare her room quickly.” 

“No, no, don’t worry, Mother darling, there 
is nothing the matter with me. A little rest 
will revive me entirely. I shall go up stairs 
and lie down for a few minutes, and soon I 
shall feel all right. Go for your walk in per¬ 
fect tranquillity.” 

“Is what you are saying perfectly true, 
Olga?” 

“Yes, Mother dear.” 

“Then I believe you. Gracious! how you 
upset me. Such emotions exhaust me. Orcha¬ 
poff, pour out some vodka for me, and you, 
General, pass me the box of cigars.” 

A quarter of an hour later, the Grand Duch- 


AND THE CLOWNS 29 


ess went out in an automobile to drive around 
the “Bois” and one could see her laughing 
heartily as she related some story to the re¬ 
spectfully attentive Orchapoff. 


Free at last, the Princess ran quickly up¬ 
stairs. Her room was gay and bright, over¬ 
looking the villa’s little garden and from it 
you could see, through a space between the 
houses, a corner of the Avenue du Bois-de- 
Boulogne. Above the bed an ancient ikon cast 
into the shadow of an old-rose canopy, the 
scintillations of its dull gold, under the faint 
flickering of an altar-light that the young girl 
tendered personally. 

Against the wall, on either side of the 
mantlepiece, were hung two men’s portraits, 
the first, wearing the byzantine ducal coronet, 
the second the crown of a reigning prince. Be¬ 
neath each of these photographs one saw on 
the broad white matting two upright official 
signatures: “Alexander,” “Michel.” 

The one on the left represented the Grand 
Duke Alexander Dimitrievitch in his uniform 
as Ataman of the Cossacks of Adour: a large 


30 


THE PRINCESS 


bull-dog face, on which was the dark line of a 
drooping mustache, cold-looking eyes half hid¬ 
den by heavy eyelids, a mouth with sensuous 
lips and a large jaw ending in a prominent chin. 

The other was that of a man of about thirty 
years of age, whose hair, brushed up in front, 
framed a high brow and whose full blonde 
beard covered his cheeks. A distinguished face, 
that of an artist, extremely sympathetic, with 
dreamy, slightly melancholy eyes, a straight 
well-cut nose, and a mouth faintly shaded by a 
small mustache. 

All over the room, on the furniture, on the 
mantlepiece, against the wall, were an innum¬ 
erable quantity of souvenirs, knick-knacks rare 
or valueless, coming from Russia, even little 
rustic wooden toys, all of which denoted in 
Olga Alexandrowna, a passionate love for all 
that recalled her far-away country. 

As she entered she made before the ikon, as 
was her custom, three rapid orthodox signs of 
the cross, and then let herself fall into a chair 
with her head between her hands. Then she 
went over and leant upon the mantlepiece where 
she gazed for a long time at the man with the 
blonde beard, and finally threw herself on her 


AND THE CLOWNS 31 


bed, a prey to a cruel perplexity. Her mind 
was so absorbed that she repeated several 
times aloud: 

“How can this clown know that melody? 
Who could have taught it to him?” 

For that had been the true cause of the vio¬ 
lent emotion she experienced during the act of 
Michalis and Partner.—The hearing all of a 
sudden, that piece of music composed formerly 
for her, and which she thought she alone knew, 
since it had never been published and since the 
one who composed it was dead. 

And now she found herself drawn back, by 
this astonishing incident, to years gone by; be¬ 
fore her eyes lay all her former life with its 
alternate joys and sorrows. 

She saw herself back at Saint Petersburg in 
the magnificent palace of her parents, on the 
Newsky Prospekt, at the Court where she went 
to play with the Imperial princesses; at Tsar- 
koe-Selo, where she spent long weeks, treated 
by the sovereigns like one of their own daugh¬ 
ters. She recalled the gentle, rather sad face 
of Nicholas II, the more enigmatical one of the 
Empress, the little Tsarevitch, so pale and so 


32 


THE PRINCESS 


pretty, and finally her dear friends the prin¬ 
cesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia. 

One day, in the early part of 1914, when 
her sixteenth birthday was approaching, the 
Czar said to her father: 

“Alexander Dimitrievitch, you must soon 
think of marrying off this charming child. I 
have a suitor in mind for her; we shall discuss 
it shortly.” 

And, one month later, her mother had told 
her, half laughing, half crying, that she was 
engaged to Michel III, reigning Grand Duke 
of Georgevia, that little principality on the 
border of Roumania, which had since been 
made into an independent state at the treaty of 
Versailles, as my readers well know. 

A diplomatic marriage, certainly, by which 
the Emperor tried to attach to himself Michel 
III, who never came to Court, or left his splen¬ 
did palace of Tcharkowla, so full of works of 
art, except to take long trips round the world 
under the name of Michel Provinkoff—but also 
a great marriage that was going to make little 
Olga Alexandrowna into Her Highness. 

The Grand Duke of Georgevia, respecting 
the wish expressed by his sovereign, though he 


AND THE CLOWNS 33 


had, they say, to break off a proposed alliance 
with a young French widow, arrived a few 
weeks later at Saint Petersburg for the official 
celebration of the announcement of his engage¬ 
ment. 

He was just like the photograph sent by him 
formally to the future Grand Duchess, that 
photograph that she had questioned at length 
trying to discover in it the secret of her future, 
and which was now hanging on the right of the 
mantlepiece in her room in exile. 

In spite of the shade of sadness that had 
spread over his face, and the reason of which 
she could not guess, Michel III had instantly 
charmed the Princess by his intelligence, his 
very varied talents and his artistic tastes. As 
for him, after a few brief conversations, he 
had seemed surprised to find in Olga Alex- 
androwna a young girl with an alert mind, not, 
like so many others, solely interested in per¬ 
sonal adornment and pleasures. Then, hav¬ 
ing cut short as much as possible the series of 
“fetes” and dinners arranged in his honor, he 
had hastened to return to his small state. 

Very simple, an enemy of etiquette, detest¬ 
ing hollow social gatherings where none but 


34 


THE PRINCESS 


the mediocre, the commonplace and the pre¬ 
tentious get together for worldly entertain¬ 
ment, Michel of Georgevia was happy only in 
the company of artists. A music-lover—he had 
himself written a very charming symphony—he 
received, at Tcharkowla, virtuosi from all over 
the world, and when an illustrious composer 
was willing to be his guest, he welcomed him 
with princely honors. 

He left the care of administering his Prin¬ 
cipality to his minister Yvan Dobrowski and 
only showed himself to the people on rare occa¬ 
sions, and he never occupied himself with so- 
called public affairs, which did not get on any 
the worse for that. 

One must explain that Georgevia was, in 
fact, governed by the ministers of the Czar, 
and that Dobrowski, a retiring man, almost as 
invisible as the Grand Duke, limited himself to 
promulgating the laws and decrees sent from 
Saint Petersburg. 

In the early part of the summer in 1914, 
Olga Alexandrowna had come in her turn, ac¬ 
companied by her parents, to return the visit 
of her fiance. The latter, according to rule, 
first reviewed the Cossacks who composed his 


AND THE CLOWNS 35 


guard, accompanied by the Grand Duke Alex¬ 
ander, and the young girl had noticed that he 
did not ride horseback very well, and that he 
seemed ill at ease in his uniform. To-day all 
these details came back to her memory. She 
recalled that she could not help smiling when 
she saw Michel nearly unseated when his horse 
shied. 

Then concerts had succeeded concerts, to the 
great joy of Olga who was passionately de¬ 
voted to music, but to the intense boredom of 
the Ataman. The latter would have infinitely 
preferred his future son-in-law to arrange a 
bear-hunt for him in the mountains. There¬ 
fore, vexed and sulky, he had decided not to 
prolong his sojourn in Georgevia, where he be¬ 
gan to be bored to death at the end of a week, 
and he made an excuse of the gathering of the 
clouds which already darkened the political 
horizon, to return to his own people in the 
Capital of the Empire. 

Olga, desirous of flattering Michel’s tastes, 
had expressed a desire before leaving to hear 
one of his own compositions, and the young man 
had hastened to play, one evening for her alone, 
a melody which he said he had just written in 


36 


THE PRINCESS 


her honor. She had been infinitely touched by 
this attention, evident proof that her fiance, in 
spite of his apparent coldness, thought of her 
in his moments of solitude, and his composition 
appeared to her the most beautiful in the world, 
although it was rather melancholy and lan¬ 
guishing for a love melody. 

But little princesses have a sentimentality 
easy to please. As their crowned fiances gen¬ 
erally give them nothing to assuage their thirst 
for the ideal, to exalt their soul and to make 
their hearts beat except the honorary rank of 
colonel of a regiment of hussars, Olga Alex- 
androwna considered herself highly privileged 
to be able to carry away the only manuscript of 
a melody of which she had been the inspiration. 
She understood that and felt the keenest pride 
on account of it. She thought therefore with 
gentle pleasure of the Grand Duke of 
Georgevia in the special train that carried her 
home across the immense Russian plains. 

It was certainly not yet love that she felt for 
him,—and that sentiment is banished, in prin¬ 
ciple, from the unions that the women of her 
rank can contract,—but a delicate gratitude. 

She was grateful to him for not having 


AND THE CLOWNS 37 


coarsened himself, like many of the princes 
that she knew, by paying court to chorus girls, 
or, which is certainly more dangerous, to wom¬ 
en of society, and also because he combined 
with his illustrious birth, some very charming 
mental qualities. Yes, she felt herself particu¬ 
larly favored by Providence, since, in contract¬ 
ing a union which was to assure her of those 
honors that are reserved for reigning High¬ 
nesses, she was also to find the charm of a 
high-minded and artistic husband. 

Alas, Providence, whose designs are impene¬ 
trable, was preparing to strike Olga Alexan- 
drowna cruelly at the precise moment when this 
charming Princess was raising her soul in a 
burst of gratitude. 

It often acts that way with the mighty, in 
order to show the world, as our excellent Bos- 
suet says, “the nothingness of its pomps and 
grandeurs” and to teach startling lessons which 
this frivolous world obstinately refuses to heed. 

u Et nunc erudimini qui judicatis terram” 

A series of misfortunes, both private and 
public, was to sweep away the sweet dreams 
of little Princess Olga, and to overwhelm her 
with so many trials that she would soon be able 


38 


THE PRINCESS 


to cry out with the author of the Imitation: 
“It is truly a great misery to have to live on 
this earth.” 

In truth, but a few days after her return to 
Saint Petersburg, the Grand Duke Alexander 
Dimitrievitch was struck down by an attack of 
apoplexy, while he was seeking, in the com¬ 
pany of a certain number of friends and chore- 
graphic artists, the intoxication of love and 
champagne to console himself for the eight 
austerely musical days passed at the Court of 
Georgevia. 

Brought home raving and clutching in his 
stiffened hand a lock of blonde hair, he died 
during the night without having recovered con¬ 
sciousness. 

Hardly had the unfortunate Ataman been 
laid to rest when the war broke out. Michel 
III, who had hastened to attend the funeral 
of his future father-in-law, was obliged to leave 
in haste, in order to put himself at the head of 
the army, the command of which had fallen 
upon him by right of birth. The event took 
him so entirely by surprise that he was forced 
to lose forty-eight hours in order to organize 
the little orchestra which he desired to have 


AND THE CLOWNS 39 

follow him on the campaign to charm his leisure 
hours. 

To be just, let us hasten to say that the Gen¬ 
eral Staff had taken the precaution to give him 
a Chief of Staff who certainly understood noth¬ 
ing about harmony, but who possessed real mili¬ 
tary qualifications, and that the young Duke 
was wise enough to realize that he would be 
somewhat of a hindrance to this ideal officer 
during the period of mobilization. 

The marriage of Olga Alexandrowna, orig¬ 
inally arranged for the month of September, 
1914, had therefore to be postponed to an in¬ 
definite date. She bravely accepted these first 
blows of fate, and leaving to her mother the 
labor of lamenting with her friends over the 
miseries of the times, before a steaming samo¬ 
var and innumerable little cakes, she took the 
post of Head Nurse in a hospital for the 
wounded. The war gradually progressed with 
the various fortunes that we know. Michel 
III, the talents of whose Chief of Staff had 
quickly been the cause of his being placed in 
command of an army, only made three short 
visits to Petrograd (such being the new name 
of the capital) to present his respects to his 


40 


THE PRINCESS 


fiancee. At each one of these visits, the Czar, 
distressed to see the union with his little cousin 
put off indefinitely, spoke of celebrating the 
marriage with the Grand Duke of Georgevia 
without further delay, but Michel permitted 
himself to observe to his Majesty that, in spite 
of his extreme impatience concerning this union, 
it seemed to him hardly fitting to consider his 
own personal happiness while his soldiers went 
daily to be killed as a result of orders signed 
by him. 

The Emperor had not insisted, all the more 
because Olga shared the opinion of her future 
husband, in whom she appreciated, under the 
circumstances, this delicacy of feeling. She 
had, in truth, felt repugnance at airing her hap¬ 
piness before so many miseries, and she also 
sensed that if there is any advantage in being 
a sovereign, it is on the condition of being a 
sovereign of happy subjects. 

This happiness, alas, did not seem to be re¬ 
served for her. The Revolution had broken 
out, suddenly, brutally and violently. Blow fol¬ 
lowed blow, the abdication of the Czar, the ar¬ 
rest of the Imperial family and the victory of 


AND THE CLOWNS 41 


the Bolshevicks cast down to the ground the 
entire edifice of the monarchy. 

Michel III, seeing his troops disband, hast¬ 
ened back to Georgevia in the hopes of stamp¬ 
ing out, by his presence, the revolutionary 
movement, and the Princess Olga, taking her 
mother with her, managed to flee from the 
Capital, thanks to the help of several soldiers, 
grateful for the care she had bestowed upon 
them. 

Joined by Countess Orchapoff and General 
Kameniski, the two women, disguised as peas¬ 
ants, turned toward Georgevia, in the hope of 
finding refuge there, but, on their way, a fright¬ 
ful piece of news came to their ears. The 
Grand Duke Michel had failed in his enter¬ 
prise, and communists from Moscow had as¬ 
sassinated both him and his minister, Dobrow- 
ski, in the outskirts of Tcharkowla, at the 
moment when he was attempting to sail. 

Thereupon the little troop turned their steps 
toward the North and walking by night and 
hiding by day, helped by the peasants that the 
virus Bolshevick had not yet attacked, man¬ 
aged miraculously to reach Sweden. 


42 


THE PRINCESS 


Such were the memories which, each in their 
turn, lit up and clouded the face of the charm¬ 
ing Princess Olga Alexandrowna, stretched on 
her bed in her room at the Villa Said, under the 
ancient ikon of which the dull gold shone under 
the flickering light of the little altar lamp, 
whose shadow now obliterated familiar things. 

But always, with each vision of the past, 
this question came back to the mind of the 
young girl: “How can this clown know the 
melody composed for me by the Grand Duke 
Michel of Georgevia, the melody of which the 
only manuscript is there in the drawer of my 
writing desk?” 

While she dreamed, Michalis and Partner 
had long since left the Olympia by the door of 
the “rue Caumartin.” When they came off the 
stage, as they reached their dressing-room, 
Partner had simply asked his companion, whose 
eyes were full of tears, “Is it she?” and Mich¬ 
alis had replied in a voice choked with emo¬ 
tion, “Yes, it is she!” Since then as was their 
custom they had said nothing more. In fact, 
those two men who never left one another, who 


AND THE CLOWNS 


43 


lunched and dined together and who lived at 
the same hotel in connecting rooms, did not 
exchange twenty words during the entire day, 
outside of certain sentences that occurred dur¬ 
ing their “act.” At the theatre, where they 
arrived and left together, their friendliness, 
their thoughtfulness of their co-workers, their 
generosity toward the dressers and the scene- 
shifters, were only equalled by their silence. 
“Good morning.” “How are you?”. . .“Very 
well, thank you.” “Good evening.” “Good¬ 
night.” were the only words one heard them 
exchange. When they passed an actress or a 
show-girl in the passage, they stopped, hat in 
hand, to allow her to pass; if they heard one of 
their comrades calling out: “I have forgotten 
my powder,” or “Who will let me have a little 
grease-paint?” sentences that were heard every 
evening behind the wings, they were the first 
to offer what was lacking. The acrobat who 
was for the moment financially embarrassed, 
always found in his dressing-room the provi¬ 
dential “louis,” and if he forgot this little debt, 
neither of them would ever remind him. They 
were highly esteemed, but were something of 
an enigma, living apart from this great circus 


44 THE PRINCESS 

family to which they had belonged but a short 
time. 

All that was known about them was that 
they had made their debut in London a year 
ago, in 1919, and then had spent a short sea¬ 
son in Holland and that they had played for 
one month at the Alhambra in Brussels. That 
was all. But the idea of questioning them never 
occurred to anyone. 

On this particular day, they had walked up 
the boulevards together without saying a word, 
and returned about half past six to take a light 
dinner before the evening show in the tavern 
beneath the Olympia. 

As Michalis, his eyes lost in a dream, did 
not seem to notice the dish that was placed on 
the table, Partner asked a second time: 

“It is really she, then?’’ 

“Yes, it is really she,” replied his compan¬ 
ion. 


CHAPTER III 

Generally, as you know, when a woman is 
devoured by curiosity she no longer lives, and 
there is nothing in the world she is not cap¬ 
able of in order to calm her soul obsessed by 
the imperative need of knowledge. Princesses 
do not escape, any more than others, this tend¬ 
ency of a sex that finds so much strength to sat¬ 
isfy its weaknesses, and Olga Alexandrowna 
was not an exception among princesses. 

In this present case, we must admit, there 
was sufficient to push to an extreme this slight 
failing of hers. 

And after all, is curiosity a fault? For my 
part, I have never been able to admit it; on the 
contrary it appears to me to be one of the finest 
qualities of the human race, perhaps the finest, 
in any case the most fecund, and if I were to 
make the plans for an ideal city, I would, in 
45 


46 


THE PRINCESS 


the first place, have it dominated by a gigantic 
statue of a woman, shading her eyes with one 
hand in order to see better, and cupping her 
ear with the other in order to hear better. On 
this pedestal would be written these words: 
“To curiosity, from a grateful humanity.” For, 
in fact, is it not to this goddess that one owes 
all the discoveries of science, all the master¬ 
pieces of art as well as those of literature? 

Yes, in truth, when you reflect a little, you 
perceive that here below only three things are 
really productive: curiosity, laziness and loaf¬ 
ing. 

Do not protest, or rather think first of that 
gentleman who, dreaming on his back under 
an apple-tree, discovered the law of gravita¬ 
tion, and of that other who, in his bath, in¬ 
stead of washing himself pondered so deeply on 
other things that he received the revelation of 
the laws of weight. You see! 

But you say you are anxious to know to what 
measure that curiosity of Olga’s forced her. I 
am going to satisfy you. 

Our charming heroine then, after having re¬ 
sisted for two days, two endless days, two 
frightful days, during which her distraction 


AND THE CLOWNS 47 


brought down upon her a thousand reproaches 
from her mother, decided suddenly to clear up, 
cost what it might, the mystery that absorbed 
her mind, dominated all her thoughts, and 
troubled her sleep. 

One fine afternoon, she arranged so that she 
lost the good Countess Orchapoff at a store, 
and then jumped into a carriage and gave 
orders to be driven to the Olympia, where she 
tremblingly asked for the manager. She was 
agreeably surprised, on entering a simply furn¬ 
ished office, to find a charming man of perfect 
bearing and courtesy. 

She had prepared a very complicated story, 
in order to hide her identity, but she had not 
the time to relate it for the manager of the 
Olympia, a Parisian, too well posted not to 
know the important guests of the Capital, 
called her at once by her title of princess. 

Reassured by this respectful reception, she 
decided on the truth at once, and it was in 
strict confidence that she divulged the object 
of her visit. 

She recalled her fainting spell of the preced¬ 
ing Sunday, and rapidly explained that the mel¬ 
ody played by Michalis at this performance 


48 


THE PRINCESS 


led her to suppose that not only was this man 
one of her compatriots, but that he must also 
have been in touch with certain members of 
her family that she had lost track of and from 
whom she had had no news. She wished, there¬ 
fore, to have an interview with him, but, in 
order not to worry the Grand Duchess her 
mother by false hopes, she wished to see the 
clown secretly. She hoped that the manager 
would have the kindness to deliver this mes¬ 
sage to his employe. If the latter consented to 
this interview, he was to come the following 
morning about ten o’clock to meet the Princess 
on the “Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogue,” where 
she would be walking with her white greyhound 
on a level with the “rue Pergolese.” 

Having been assured that everything would 
be done as she wished, she went away blushing, 
still quite astonished at her audacity, and anxi¬ 
ously wondering if the step she had just taken 
was not unworthy of a cousin of the Czar. 
Her conscience, however, answered “No.” For 
if women much more than men, have the habit 
of questioning themselves afterwards concern¬ 
ing the acts that their impulsive nature has 
urged them to do, they possess the marvelous 


AND THE CLOWNS 49 

faculty of always finding, for the most adven¬ 
turous of these acts, explanations and excuses 
that relieve their charming souls of the weight 
of remorse. 

Olga said to herself that she had acted wise¬ 
ly, for after all, it was a means of procuring, if 
possible, some details concerning the frightful 
death of the Grand Duke Michel and of ob¬ 
taining, perhaps, some useful information about 
the great work of restoration that was always 
hoped for. 

From that time on she thought of nothing 
but the way she would, on the next day, ap¬ 
proach Michalis who certainly deserved her 
benevolence as a compatriot, and without doubt 
an unfortunate one, but whose profession put 
him so far away from her. She planned her 
attitude through the whole evening with that 
nicety in the choice of shades which is the most 
absorbing concern of high aristocracy. 

Nothing is more complicated, I can assure 
you, than this delicate science named: “old- 
fashioned politeness,” which consists as much 
in knowing how to be impolite with tact to¬ 
ward certain people as in being obsequious with 
dignity toward others. 


50 


THE PRINCESS 


The Princess dreamed late into the night 
under the kindly glances of the Ataman and the 
Grand Duke, on whose portraits the altar lamp 
with its dancing flame shed a pale light. 


This November morning was particularly 
cold for winter was quickly succeeding autumn. 
An icy little wind that came down from the 
slopes of Suresnes, passed whistling through 
the bare trees of the “Bois de Boulogne.” It 
raised the hoar frost from the branches and 
spread it in a rain of silver on the ground, then 
passing through the “porte Dauphine” whirled 
up the pathway of the avenue, in order finally, 
to form, in a fantastic circle around the “Arc 
de Triomphe,” the dead leaves whose yellow 
surface was covered with a white net-work. A 
slight mist swept over the ground, occasionally 
resting on the small shrubbery which it trans¬ 
formed into big puffs of rice-powder, and the 
little streams by the sidewalks resembled long 
clear mirrors. 

The “Avenue du Bois” was almost deserted 
at ten o’clock. You could only see two or three 
people walking with a rapid business-like step, 


AND THE CLOWNS 


51 


a laborer all wrapped up in his muffler and 
clapping together his hands on which he wore 
sheep-skin gloves, a policeman whose raised 
hood transformed him into a monk, and, over 
there, on the level with the “rue Pergolese,” a 
young girl warmly clad in sable, around whom 
gamboled a large foolish old dog. 

The Princess Olga Alexandrowna awaited 
the clown Michalis. She walked up and down, 
lost in her thoughts, her heart beating, her 
throat tightened, prey to an emotion that she 
could not overcome. 

Was she going to find herself facing an old 
servant of the Grand Duke or one of his exe¬ 
cutioners? 

Would this man show her respect, or else, 
misinterpreting the step taken by her on the 
preceding day, would he assume an uncalled- 
for attitude, or would she, on the contrary, have 
to encourage him by her graciousness to over¬ 
come his timidity? 

And while thinking of these things, she re¬ 
viewed in her mind the well-turned sentences 
she had prepared with which to rapidly ques¬ 
tion the strange individual who had been sum¬ 
moned so imprudently. 


52 


THE PRINCESS 


But suppose he shouldn’t come? Suppose 
he refused this interview from which she ex¬ 
pected so many vague and unformulated 
things?—This idea which had come suddenly 
into her mind increased her anguish; she walked 
with a more rapid step, as if searching some 
means by which she could force the clown to 
furnish her with the information which no 
doubt he must possess. 

She had just reached that point in her re¬ 
flections when, suddenly, her greyhound 
crouched to the ground with a dull growl, and 
she felt herself held by a mysterious force. 
She stopped short and turned around suddenly, 
with the impression that someone stood behind 
her. 

Michalis was standing about three yards 
from her, immovable, hat in hand, and at quite 
a distance, like a footman following his master 
or like a minister behind his king, the Prin¬ 
cess perceived Partner in the same attitude. 

Surprised, the young girl remained silent for 
a few seconds. At last, mastering herself, she 
murmured in a faltering voice: 

“I thank you, Sir, for having responded so 
obligingly to my request.” 


AND THE CLOWNS 53 


Evidently that was not at all what she had 
planned to say; she had prepared a way of 
opening the conversation that was much more 
noble, much more “princess-like,” but, all of a 
sudden her beautiful edifice had crumbled and 
her thoughts had all scattered to the winds, 
simply because she had not seen the man ap¬ 
proaching. 

Nothing is so difficult as to keep one’s dig¬ 
nity when faced by the unexpected. That is 
just why etiquette forbids the questioning of 
royal personages; it prevents them from reply¬ 
ing foolishly or from belittling themselves by 
any awkwardness. 

Michalis had certainly not dared to be the 
first to address the Princess Olga, but she had 
the curious impression of being questioned by 
him. Explain that if you can! 

Nevertheless, as the clown did not change 
his deferential attitude, simply replying as he 
bowed: “Madame may be assured that I am 
only too honored to be of any service to her,” 
she felt a quieting down of a slight unreason¬ 
able anger that began to surge up in her. And 
then, this Michalis showed signs of a certain 


54 


THE PRINCESS 


breeding in calling her “Madame” instead of 
“Mademoiselle” and in using, without lowering 
himself to servility, the third person when 
speaking to her. From that instant, she did 
not doubt that he had been in the habit of ap¬ 
pearing in the presence of important person¬ 
ages. 

After having begged him to replace his hat, 
Olga Alexandrowna took a few steps, followed 
by the black clown who kept a trifle behind 
her, then turning toward him she asked 
frankly: 

“Is it not true that you, the other day, pur¬ 
posely played this melody that I thought I 
alone knew. Did you recognize me?” 

Michalis replied in a trembling voice: 

“Yes, Madame.” 

The Princess, who had not up to that point 
looked straight at him, then noticed that he was 
horribly pale and seemed ready to faint. As 
his eyes were lowered, she could examine him 
at leisure for a few seconds, and she was struck 
by the fineness of his features, as also by the 
distinction of his face, which the make-up at the 
Olympia had hidden. 


AND THE CLOWNS 55 

She continued, desirous of enlightening her¬ 
self without delay. 

“How did you know that piece of music? By 
what chance did it fall into your hands. And 
first, before anything else, who are you, Sir?” 

At this last question, Michalis, whose body 
was shaken by a nervous trembling that he 
could not overcome, staggered slightly, took off 
his hat with one hand, passed the other over 
his brow and then slowly, very slowly, raised 
his heavy eyelids and looked with feverish 
glance straight into the eyes of the young Prin¬ 
cess without saying a word. 

Olga, troubled by the clown’s sad expression 
and by the tears that she saw flowing down his 
wan cheeks, did not dream of renewing her 
unanswered question. 

She remained immovable, as if fascinated, 
feeling the same strange discomfort that had 
troubled her on the day of the matinee at the 
music-hall. 

Suddenly something extraordinary happened. 
The Princess stretched out her arms, as if to 
evade an invisible object, and moaned faintly. 

There, in front of her, another face, little 


56 


THE PRINCESS 


by little, replaced that of Michalis, whose lines 
were exactly like it. The marked wrinkles of 
his brow disappeared, the feverish eyes became 
sweet and melancholy, on his cheeks, which now 
appeared fuller, appeared a well-trimmed 
blonde beard and a slight mustache shadowed 
his lips. 

Olga Alexandrowna murmured as if in a 
dream: 

“Michel!. . .Michel! Is it really you?” 

And her heart having stopped beating for a 
second, she shut her eyes, her nostrils closed 
and she would have fallen; but Michalis had 
rushed toward her and, with the help of Part¬ 
ner, who had also run forward, he carried her 
fainting to one of the benches in the avenue. 

When she regained consciousness, the musi¬ 
cian was sobbing, his brow resting on his hand. 
As she opened her mouth to speak he cried out: 

“You are mistaken, Madame, I am not the 
one you think me to be!” 

Then he fled like a madman, leaving to Part¬ 
ner the care of escorting the young bewildered 
girl to the door of the Villa Said. 


AND THE CLOWNS 57 


She entered her home staggering, went up 
to her room and fell upon her bed with her 
head burning, her mind vacant, incapable of 
replying to the innumerable questions put to her 
by the distracted Grand Duchess. 

A doctor, called in haste, for fear of brain- 
fever or an attack of meningitis, put ice on her 
forehead and advised that she be left in com¬ 
plete silence. 

She remained prostrated all day, and only 
opened her eyes toward evening. Memory 
came back to her then, she searched in the 
semi-darkness for the portrait of Michel, and 
gazed at it for a long space of time. 

Once again she stretched her beautiful arms 
out, but this time with a gesture filled with in¬ 
finite tenderness, for the marvelous miracle was 
being accomplished for the second time. 

The calm face of the Grand Duke changed 
slowly, the brow was marked with lines of pain, 
the cheeks appeared sunken and hollow leaving 
the cheek-bones prominent. 

She had before her the grave, half tragic, 
iand strangely attractive face of the clown 
Michalis. 


58 


THE PRINCESS 


Then, certain of not being mistaken, she fell 
back on her pillow and wept for a long time; 
tears of joy which quieted her poor unstrung 
nerves and soothed her into a calm reviving 
sleep. 

She was saved! 


CHAPTER IV 

Yes, that was just the way, I can guarantee, 
without, however, being able to reveal just by 
what inquiries and indiscretions I was informed 
about these historical details, that was just the 
way, I say, that the Princess Olga found her 
fiance, the Grand Duke Michel III of George- 
via in the person of the musical clown Michalis. 

And if any people pretend that I am making 
a daring statement, if the “charge d’affaires” 
of Georgevia flatly contradicts this fact that I 
am reciting, (and he will not fail to do so), I 
shall simply ask those who deny it to tell me 
what became of the two men who made all 
Paris flock to the Olympia at that time, and 
why, since the month of December, 1920, no 
one ever saw any music-hall, theatre or circus 
advertisements bearing the names of Michalis 
and Partner. 


59 


60 


THE PRINCESS 


To this, I assure you, no one can answer. 
Therefore, dear readers, do not allow your¬ 
selves to be influenced by the protestations of 
people who are only too anxious to crush out 
truth, and continue, I beg of you, the reading 
of this story that still has in reserve a certain 
number of surprises for you. 

The pseudo-Michalis could not in spite of 
the strange resolution that he seemed to have 
formed, deny any longer his true personality. 
At the second interview that the Princess had 
with him at her house, during the absence of 
her mother, he tried at first to convince her of 
her mistake by a most unlikely story, but his 
emotion, his confused replies, the impossibility 
of furnishing a plausible explanation concern¬ 
ing the famous melody, everything belied his 
words. 

At last, besieged by questions, unable to re¬ 
sist any longer, he threw himself at the feet 
of Olga Alexandrowna, pale with emotion, and 
kissing with fervor her hands which he had 
taken in his, ended with sobbing admission that 
he was really Michel Provinkoff, former reign¬ 
ing Grand Duke of Georgevia. But, at the 
same time, he begged the Princess not to reveal 


AND THE CLOWNS 61 


to a single soul the secret that he had just con¬ 
fided to her, and this with so much insistence 
and strength that she had to consent, although 
promising herself inwardly to make him as 
soon as possible change his mind about this in¬ 
explicable desire. 

Reassured on this point, he made the follow¬ 
ing statement to the Princess, who begged him 
to give her an account of his painful odyssey: 

“When I returned to Tcharkowla to attempt 
to check the Bolshevik movement, I thought, 
at first, that I should easily accomplish my 
plans, for you know the peaceful nature of the 
Georgevians. But, alas, I had shortly to ad¬ 
mit that the fight was impossible. New ele¬ 
ments from Moscow terrorized the population, 
and well supplied with arms and amunition, 
they began to execute all of those who opposed 
their plots. I was forced to flee. 

“One night, after having shaved off my 
beard and mustache, I left the royal palace 
with a few faithful followers. To put the as¬ 
sassins off the track we divided into two groups. 
I went toward the North, accompanied by my 
minister Dobrowski and a servant. Some offi¬ 
cers, with the intention of sacrificing themselves 


62 


THE PRINCESS 


for me went ostensibly toward the sea. What 
these heroic young men had forseen happened. 
Their little band was quickly reported to the 
members of the Soviet and red soldiers fol¬ 
lowed them in hot pursuit. 

‘‘Caught at the moment when they were 
about to sail, my poor friends were massacred 
after having fought desperately. As one of 
them had purposely kept on his uniform under 
his civilian clothes, and as he ressembled me a 
little, the assassins, who hardly knew me, pro¬ 
claimed with pride that they had just rid the 
world of the tyrant Michel Provinkoff, Grand 
Duke of Georgevia. 

“This error helped considerably to assure 
me relative safety. They did not search for 
me any longer. 

“During this time, persuaded that the best 
way of escaping was to throw ourselves delib¬ 
erately into the heart of the revolution, we set 
forth, Dobrowski, my servant and I, little by 
little toward Moscow. I had been able to 
carry off enough money to afford us a means of 
existence for a few weeks; so the trip was ac¬ 
complished without hindrance. But hardly 
had we entered the city when we were seized 


AND THE CLOWNS 


63 


under orders from the Soviets and sent with a 
hundred other vagabonds to a place several 
versts away to work upon the roads. 

“Lodged in abominable huts, scarcely nour¬ 
ished, and overworked, we then knew the worst 
of sufferings. 

“Soon typhus came into our midst and made 
large gaps in our ranks; by some miracle we 
were spared, my minister and I; unfortunately 
our poor companion, weaker than ourselves, 
was not long in succumbing, and we buried him 
with tears in our eyes. 

“They decided at last, after several months, 
to separate the survivors of this lamentable 
troop and as I had won the sympathies of our 
guardians by playing popular songs to them at 
night on my violin, they gave me my liberty 
and also that of Dobrowski. 

“I instantly decided to go to Petrograd, 
where I thought I could manage to get news 
of you and also of the Imperial family, as the 
reports that circulated through the country 
were very varied. 

“To earn board and lodging on our way, we 
commenced to improvise little shows that we 


64 


THE PRINCESS 


gave in the public squares of the villages or at 
the isolated farms. 

“I played the violin, I even sang, and Do- 
browski, whose talent for mimicry had form¬ 
erly entertained us in private life, gave simple 
sketches that made the peasants laugh. 

“Well received here, chased off by stones 
elsewhere, often sleeping in the open air, spend¬ 
ing entire days without eating, we at last ar¬ 
rived at the Capital after two months’ tramp¬ 
ing. 

“There we had the good fortune to get hired 
at once in a sort of circus authorized by the 
commissioners to give shows for the people, 
and it was then, for the first time, that we put 
off our clown costumes. 

“This accomplished, we instantly started in 
quest of information. 

“Alas, all that we heard was frightful. My 
first care had been to hasten to your hotel which 
I found completely burnt. People whom I 
questioned told me that you and your august 
mother must have perished in the fire. My 
despair was terrible. I fell sick and hung be¬ 
tween life and death for days, prey to a de¬ 
lirium which would have betrayed me if 


AND THE CLOWNS 65 

Dobrowski had not taken the precaution of al¬ 
lowing no one to approach me. 

“At last, my robust constitution triumphed; 
I returned to life unrecognizable, ruined physi¬ 
cally and morally. 

“In order to live, I had to take up my trade 
once more as a fool; I did so mechanically, for 
all my rancor, all my bitterness, all my inner 
revolt had disappeared. The feelings of my 
own personality no longer existed in me; my 
soul was dead. I went, I came, I acted as if 
in a dream, and I looked at the outside world 
without seeing it. Wrapped in my sorrow, the 
only joy I experienced was when I expressed by 
the aid of my violin, the nostalgia of my heart. 
It was from that moment that the world was 
good enough to discover in me a certain orig¬ 
inality of talent. 

“At the end of about a year our circus under¬ 
took, under the orders of the Soviets, a long 
circuit across Russia. * It was to provide dis¬ 
traction for the people, so that they might for¬ 
get the hunger that was beginning to torture 
them. 

“The halting places of this trip brought us 
one day to Odessa. Dobrowski, without speak- 


66 


THE PRINCESS 


ing to me of his plans, for the chagrin which 
was undermining me had killed my initiative 
and left in me only an innate fear.of action, Do- 
browski, I say, succeeded in hiring the services 
of some dissatisfied sailors. 

“One night he enticed me, in spite of myself, 
to the outskirts of the town, where a little fish¬ 
ing-boat awaited us which landed us, after a 
very rough trip, at Constantinople. 

“The war had long since finished; we were 
out of danger. 

“The authorities of the Allies, on hearing 
the recital of our misfortunes from my minis¬ 
ter, who did not divulge our personalities, au¬ 
thorized us to embark as workmen on a Brit¬ 
ish ship. 

“It was in this way that we reached England 
about the month of February, 1919. 

“We went at once to solicit an engagement 
at the Alhambra in London; our act was luckily 
accepted and we started shortly after under 
the named of Michalis and Partner. You know 
the rest.” 

Such was the recital which, with his head in 
his hands, not daring to look at her, as if he 


AND THE CLOWNS 67 

were ashamed, the Grand Duke Michel made 
to the Princess Olga Alexandrowna. 

I leave you to imagine with what exclama¬ 
tions she interrupted him, and how the tears 
flowed from her eyes while the hollow voice 
of her fiance was speaking. How he had suf¬ 
fered! 

A great tenderness suddenly filled the young 
girl’s heat. She would have liked to hold to 
her breast the poor head which privations and 
chagrin had so emaciated, and to kiss those 
large eyes that were burning with fever. 

There is no woman worthy of the name who 
does not experience the need of consoling and 
of curing, and love is a plant that never really 
flourishes well except in ruins. When one 
wishes to transplant it to rich soil it dies there; 
when one cultivates it under glass it produces 
only flowers without perfume. 

Olga, faced by so much misery, by such ter¬ 
rible demoralization, felt the woman in her for 
the first time. She understood that she was 
going to love, now when he was poor and mis¬ 
erable, the one for whom she had felt only 
sympathy when he was powerful and rich. 

But one thing appeared to her as incompre- 


68 


THE PRINCESS 


hensible. Why had Michel of Georgevia, after 
the escape from the Bolshevik hell, not stated 
his name and qualifications? Why had he not 
made himself known, and why had he drawn 
into this voluntary shadow his good minister, 
Dobrowski ? 

To this question that she asked him at once, 
so extraordinary did this self-denial and re¬ 
nunciation appear to her, the Grand Duke re¬ 
plied: 

“We had on us no papers, not the smallest 
thing to prove our identity, I feared to be 
treated as an imposter. . . .And then. . . and 
then, above all, I believed you to be dead, 
Madame. Honors without you would have 
been unbearable to me. Too great a believer 
in God to kill myself, I preferred to await, un¬ 
known, until death should liberate me from a 
situation where nothing could lighten my sor¬ 
row. Dobrowski had not the same reason to 
bury himself alive in this moral tomb; I ad¬ 
vised him several times to leave me, to get back 
into real life, but he always refused to do so 
out of devotion; and I had not the courage to 
insist, so fearful was I of total solitude.” 

On hearing this new avowal of the passion 


AND THE CLOWNS 


69 


that she had, without knowing it, inspired in 
her fiance, the little Princess felt her heart 
melt; she let herself fall at the feet of the young 
man and murmured in a whisper: 

“My lord, I too love you. I too have suf¬ 
fered frightfully.” 

Michel drew her to him gently, and they re¬ 
mained a long time without speaking, savoring, 
after so many sore trials, the sweetness of this 
miraculous reunion. 


If, as you see, Olga Alexandrowna was cap¬ 
able of falling suddenly in love with an unfor¬ 
tunate and down-fallen being, it was you may 
nevertheless rest assured, solely on condition of 
being able to remember that this man was a 
former reigning Prince, quite likely to regain 
his rank tomorrow. Not that she clung abso¬ 
lutely to power! But she felt instinctively that 
a sovereign is a being apart, who is able to be 
important among men only in exercising the 
functions that God has put upon him, since he 
was not created to have individual qualities, 
but rather to represent those of his people. 
Therefore, in the numerous interviews that she 


70 


THE PRINCESS 


had with Michel on the following days, she 
tried to persuade him to make himself known 
and to reclaim his throne. 

The situation was particularly favorable for 
Georgevia, freed for a year and a half from 
Bolshevism, and constituted now into an inde¬ 
pendent state with monarchical tendencies, was 
already beginning official conferences with 
European Courts to find a suitable monarch. 

But, in response to each of these attempts, 
the young girl met with fierce, irreducible ob¬ 
stinacy. In vain did she try to prove to her 
fiance by all possible arguments, that he should 
not shun the duty of governing the Georgevian 
people, citing to him as examples the other de¬ 
throned kings whose efforts to regain their 
crowns filled the world with a vain tumult. 
Nothing swayed him. 

“Why do you wish,” Michel Provinkoff said 
gently, “me to take up again a function that I 
carried out very poorly before the war, and this 
too at a time when my ideas have progressed 
and when I find myself further away than ever 
from the conceptions of government befitting 
a sovereign? No, it would indeed be acting 


AND THE CLOWNS 71 


unwisely for me to try to ascend a throne to 
which I am not in the least destined by nature.” 

She could get nothing else from him, and 
commenced really to despair when, one day, re¬ 
membering having read in Nietzsche, whose im¬ 
placable philosophy she had studied and loved, 
that woman was the warrior’s reward, she con¬ 
ceived the idea of declaring to the Grand Duke 
that if he persisted in his resolution, she could 
never be his in spite of all her love, preferring 
a thousand times to die of chagrin rather than 
to consent to disown a rank of which she felt 
proud to cling to the duties and the shackles in 
default of advantages and honors. 

The hope that she had placed in these tactics 
was not disappointed. On hearing these words, 
Michel became pale; a sombre resolution ap¬ 
peared in his sad eyes; he took hold of the 
young girl’s hands and looked at her a long 
time without saying a word. Then he said al¬ 
most angrily: 

“Very well, it shall be as you wish. I love 
you so intensely, Olga Alexandrowna, I desire 
you so passionately that, for your sake and to 
possess you, I would even make myself a crim- 


72 


THE PRINCESS 


inal. You only ask me to be King. I shall be 
King, I swear it to you.” 

She gave a great cry of joy, and as the young 
man drew her face to his, she gave him her lips 
on which he imprinted a long kiss. 

While he prolonged the intoxication of this 
kiss, and while a flash of triumph came over 
his face, Olga with her eyes closed, saw as if 
in a wonderful dream, a cathedral filled with 
flags and hangings, popes in gold-embroidered 
chasubles, decorated officers, pages, in fact a 
royal procession around which censers set in 
precious stones gave forth a cloud of perfumed 
incense. 


From this voluptuously historical moment, 
whose date she noted with the greatest care on 
account of the diary that she had planned to 
write, Olga Alexandrowna took the reins in 
hand concerning future plans. 

The engagement of Michalis and Partner at 
the Olympia finished four days later and it was 
decided that the two men should go into re¬ 
tirement in an isolated country spot where they 
would meet no one. There, Michel would rest 


AND THE CLOWNS 


73 


in absolute quiet from his fatigues and his long 
anguish; he would wait also until nature should 
restore to him his former appearance, just as 
love had restored to him his princely soul. 
That would leave Olga all the time necessary 
to carry out her plan, and gradually prepare 
public opinion for a possible return of the 
Grand Duke, for a beard grows infinitely less 
quickly than feelings, and the physique of mor¬ 
tals follows but slowly the variation of their 
minds. The greater part of the time, it even 
obstinately refuses to change, and in this, we 
should rejoice, for this inertia of the body 
gives a certain stability to one’s character. 
Were it not for this, one would hardly ever 
know with whom one had to deal. Yvan Do- 
browski was not obliged to concern himself 
with these things, not having changed his ap¬ 
pearance in any marked way. It sufficed that, 
for several days, he dispense with the black dye 
under which he hid the whiteness of his hair 
which for the act would have been too great a 
contrast to the tawny color of his skin. He 
seemed however delighted with this prepara¬ 
tory retreat, and accumulated in an enormous 
trunk, with a joy as febrile as it was silent, an 


74 


THE PRINCESS 


incalculable number of books of all kinds even 
to the telephone directory of Georgevia and 
the Social Register of Tcharkowla which he 
had begged the Princess to procure for him 
at the consulate. 

As she questioned Michel as to the value of 
his minister whose silence worried her the 
Grand Duke replied: 

“Dobrowski is a man who lives intensely 
within himself. Gifted with a most unusual 
memory, having seen a great deal, read a great 
deal, reflected a great deal and retained every¬ 
thing, he will accomplish admirable results, if 
as I hope I can restore to him his post of Prime 
Minister after this restoration that you antici¬ 
pate. He has a prodigious brain of which no 
one outside of myself has been able to appre¬ 
ciate the genius.” 

“But,” continued Olga, “why was he not able 
in the past to accomplish these admirable things 
that you expect of him?” 

“He could not do so. Remember this, Ma¬ 
dame. At the time of which you speak, George¬ 
via depended on the Russian government which 
dictated its laws. Independent and in perfect 
harmony with me, Dobrowski can henceforth 


AND THE CLOWNS 75 

give full proof of his worth and perhaps he will 
astonish the world.” 

Princess Olga, reassured after this conversa¬ 
tion, looked at the flat face of the minister with 
the admiration that silence always inspires 
when someone has declared once for all that it 
is the revealing indication of an exceptional 
soul. 

Everything being arranged and prepared, 
Michel Provinkoff started off with his faithful 
companion for this indispensable country exile, 
the last sad halting place of this great adven¬ 
ture, the last separation before the definite 
union. 

He was trembling with emotion on that day. 
Crushing Olga’s little hands in his, he said to 
the young girl : 

“Let it be just as you desire, my dear Prin¬ 
cess. But I beg you not to forget that your 
repeated insistence alone has made me decide 
to declare to the world that I am the Grand 
Duke of Georgevia; it is for your sake and in 
order not to lose you for ever, that I have con- 


76 


THE PRINCESS 


sented to make every effort to mount the 
throne. Remember this, Olga Alexandrowna.” 

But the Princess hardly listened to him, so 
deeply was she absorbed in the immense enter¬ 
prise, the weight of which now rested on her 
shoulders. She had been living for the last few 
days in an indescribable exaltation; a wild im¬ 
patience agitated her mind; she would have 
liked to hasten events and to accelerate the 
flight of days, and she was champing the bit 
for she realized perfectly that any premature 
gesture or any imprudent word might com¬ 
promise success. 

She expended the febirle activity that tor¬ 
tured her in a thousand insignificant ways, 
going out, returning, sitting down, and getting 
up, all of which made the Grand Duchess say 
to her: 

“For Heaven’s sake, Olga, I beg of you do 
remain quiet for a few minutes at least. You 
act like a moving-picture show. You make 
me dizzy, my dear child.” 

The departure, therefore, of her miraculous 
fiance did not trouble her, for it represented 
the first act, the prologue, to be more exact, of 
the magnificent play, of which the epilogue was 


AND THE CLOWNS 


77 


to take place in the cathedral of Tcharkowla 
all sparkling with lights. The joy of seeing the 
moment of action approach rendered the fare¬ 
well less painful. On the contrary, Olga saw 
disappear with pleasure in that forest of sig¬ 
nals, discs and posts, the train that carried off 
for ever the clown Michalis, in order to bring 
back in a few weeks the Grand Duke Michel of 
Georgevia. 


For a whole month (a very meritorious act 
on the part of a woman) she was able to re¬ 
strain her desire to talk, being, for the first 
time in her life, preoccupied by the capillary 
aspect of man. She learnt that a beard grows 
about half a millimetre in twenty-four hours 
and she had calculated that her fiance would 
not have recovered his former appearance be¬ 
fore ten or twelve weeks. 

I will not relate to you in detail how she con¬ 
trived in consequence first to cast into people’s 
minds a doubt as to the assassination of Michel 
III, then how she conveyed the idea to her 
hearers that he might still be living under a 
false name in that mysterious Bolshevist Rus- 


78 


THE PRINCESS 


sia, and then how she transferred this hypothe¬ 
sis from the drwaing-rooms into the editors’ 
offices and from there into the newspaper col¬ 
umns. Suffice to say that she displayed, in 
order to accomplish her aims, such cleverness, 
tact, and knowledge of psychology and diplo¬ 
macy as one surely would not expect to find in 
a young girl with dreamy eyes. She had, to 
help her in this delicate task, an auxiliary who 
was all the more useful on account of not being 
in the secret. I mean the Grand Duchess 
Marie Nicolaevna. It was enough for the Prin¬ 
cess on returning from one of her charitable 
trips to say to her mother: “To-day I saw a 
man, recently escaped from Russia, who swore 
to me on his oath that the Revolutionists of 
Tcharkowla had not killed Michel of George- 
via but one of his officers,” to have three or 
four important drawing-rooms notified of the 
news within twenty-four hours. This report 
with added decorations then spread quickly into 
the most aristrocratic circles where it was wel¬ 
comed by those young men of society who add 
to the insufficiency of their income by the sale 
of echos or scandal to the newspapers. She 
had put it over. 


AND THE CLOWNS 


79 


This part of the enterprise was not very diffi¬ 
cult. But where Olga gave proof of rare in¬ 
telligence, one might even say of a sort of 
genius, was the way she arranged the develop¬ 
ment of this information: 

“Michel III had perhaps not been assassin¬ 
ated.” 

“He had surely not been assassinated, but 
doubtless had died since the Revolution. Some 
refugees said that this was not so. One pre¬ 
tended to have seen him in a street in Petro- 
grad, another declared that the former Grand- 
Duke was serving in the army of the Reds 
under an assumed name, a third had heard it 
said that he was hiding in Siberia.” 

The most remarkable thing was that the 
young girl finally managed to have these unbe¬ 
lievable stories related by poor wretches whose 
imagination she worked on by her skillful ques¬ 
tioning. 

At last, one fine day, one memorable day, 
the Princess Olga received a letter from her 
former fiance. This letter, all crumpled and 
soiled, had been handed to her at night-fall, 
she said, by a mysterious, unknown man, whose 
fur collar hid his face and who approached her 


80 


THE PRINCESS 


in the street and then ran away after having 
slipped into her hand this miserable and pre¬ 
cious envelope. 

I leave you to imagine the sensation produced 
by this miraculous event, in that charming and 
child-like society where a miracle is always 
expected. Old noblemen trembled on hearing 
that there was on this earth one prince more 
than they had hoped; venerable dowagers 
wept with tenderness at the thought of his suf¬ 
ferings; the Grand Duchess and Olga found 
themselves surrounded by titled youths already 
soliciting places of honor in the princely house 
which would not fail to be organized on the re¬ 
turn of the Grand Duke after his marriage. 

As a matter of fact, Michel announced that 
he thought he would be able to escape very soon 
from the communist State, and that his letter 
would only precede him by a short space of 
time. 

There were a few gaps in all this story, a 
little haziness, not a few unlikely points, but 
no one heeded this, for men never go deeply 
into things of which they are hoping for the 
realization. And then, in 1920, remember, one 
wished to believe everything, and novels full of 


AND THE CLOWNS 81 

adventures once again achieved prodigious suc¬ 
cesses. 

An impressive silence, which lasted fifteen 
days, followed the excitement produced by this 
news; the Villa Said remained closed to the re¬ 
porters who besieged it; all of the society peo¬ 
ple lived in a state of intense expectancy,—in 
a sort of semi-religious retreat. 

Finally the thunder-bolt fell. 

Paris learnt suddenly one morning that the 
Grand Duke Michel III of Georgevia had just 
arrived in France with his minister Yvan Do- 
browski and three days later, they announced 
that His Highness had reached the Capital. 


I should indeed be greatly lacking in con¬ 
sideration if I undertook to describe to you 
events that you all still have in your memory. 
I am not one of those authors who aim cynically 
at one point, and only consider that they have 
completed a lasting work when they have man¬ 
aged in some way to blacken a certain number 
of white pages. One should never say more 
than one has to, and, above all, one should know 
how to avoid writing useless pages that the 


82 THE PRINCESS 

reader will hasten to turn with an angry hand. 

And that is exactly what would not fail to 
happen if I took upon myself to recall the en¬ 
thusiasm-—yes, the word is not too strong—, 
I may even say the delirious enthusiasm which 
took hold of the French Republicans when they 
knew that they had this lost and miraculously 
found King in their midst. 

How many entertainments they gave in his 
honor! What sensational articles appeared in 
the newspapers! The “Hotel in the place Ven- 
dome,” where he stayed, was filled with a crowd 
of eager journalists, indiscreet photographers, 
enamoured women, unemployed diplomats and 
retired generals. 

One could see, rapidly passing through there 
those men of the world who belong to the class 
of agitated idlers, who are compelled by de¬ 
cency to show themselves in ten different places 
a day, and the register placed in the lobby was 
filled with the most aristocratic and also with 
the most commercial signatures. 

You all know that. You know the rest too— 
how the Georgevian press, reflector of public 
opinion, insisted on the restoration of Michel 
Provinkoff; how, under the pressure of the na- 


AND THE CLOWNS 


83 


tions who were charmed with this fairy tale, 
the Allies gave their authorization; and also 
how the regent of Georgevia came to Paris to 
turn over his powers into the hands of the 
Prince. 

You remember the elegance and the smiling 
nobility of the new King, when he went to the 
“Elysee,” in grand Russian uniform to bid 
adieu to the President of the Republic; you 
have not forgotten the charming graciousness 
of the Princess Olga, and the noisy dignity of 
the Grand Duchess Marie, when you greeted 
them at the “gare de Lyon” at the moment of 
their departure. It is, therefore, useless for me 
to lay stress on these events which, in spite of 
their importance and originality, constitute the 
least interesting part of my narrative, as you 
will presently judge for yourself. 


CHAPTER V 

Georgevia is a picturesque and variegated 
country situated on the border of that southern 
part of Russia which is, in fact something like 
the Riviera. 

It spreads out in its Northern part in vast 
steppes which, furrowed by streams of water, 
constitute unique pastures and then it tapers off 
to a point before it reaches the Black Sea, into 
which its Capital, Tcharkowla, juts its flowered 
promontories, and where it bathes its fragrant 
gardens. 

Up there, it is almost Caucassian Russia. 
Clean villages with whitewashed houses, on the 
flat roofs of which tobacco is drying, shelter a 
Tartar population that is peaceful, silent and 
honest, raising merino sheep, spots of white 
and black wool which spot the immense plain. 

Below, one sees the Orient, a noisy people, 
84 


AND THE CLOWNS 85 


a mixture of Greeks, Venetians, Jews, bastard 
Turks and Armenians, excitable and lazy, 
whose loud-voiced women, shod in torn Turk¬ 
ish slippers, slowly drag about their heavy 
flabby bodies and dark young girls with voluptu¬ 
ous eyes that reveal, beneath their sordid rags, 
the forms of goddesses. All these people; fish¬ 
ermen, money-lenders, usurers or second-hand 
dealers devote themselves to the raising of lice, 
fleas, bugs and other parasites which thrive on 
dirt, the sun and the indifference of men. 

Tcharkowla resembles all the towns on those 
sunny coasts. Byzantine churches in dull gold 
lie beside white mosques of which the pointed 
minarets stretch toward the sky; supple cypress 
trees wave their dark foliage by the side of 
imposing cedar trees; magnolias mix their per¬ 
fumed leaves and brilliant flowers with the ole¬ 
anders; and, over there, on the rocky promon¬ 
tories, the fir trees extend their branches to 
protect, by swaying patches of shade, the wild 
acanthus that clings to the stones. In the 
streets with low houses, whose second floor is 
built in gallery shape, one passes rabbis with 
hooked noses and Greek priests with dirty 
wigs, then, toward evening, when the fisher- 


86 


THE PRINCESS 


men’s boats fold their rainbow tinted sails, one 
hears the nasal voice of the Muezzins calling 
the faithful to prayer. 

The wind from the sea sometimes wafts in 
acrid perfumes from Asia which, on the other 
side of the dull blue waters, broods in the hot 
sand of its deserts over its unquenched ambi¬ 
tions as a conqueror and its gilded dreams as 
a poet. 

Under the fierce sun which weakens the body 
and excites the imagination, the marvelous ad¬ 
venture of Michel could not but be welcomed 
favorably. In the ruins, in the ghettos, in the 
rich villas, on the quays, on the squares, in the 
little narrow streets, they related it for days at 
a time, amplifying it and adorning it with a 
thousand details, each one more picturesque 
than the other. 

It pleased the Georgevians of the North, 
who are fatalists and dreamers; it exalted those 
of the South, who quickly become enthusiastic. 

And then, there is no man in the world who 
is not enthused by a change of government; it 
appeals to some with a hope of favors, to 
others with that of profitable persecutions; 
it satisfies, to the majority, the demand for 


AND THE CLOWNS 


87 


novelty caused by the incommensurable bore¬ 
dom of the human race; it feeds loyalty and 
gives comfort to opposition; it is, finally, a 
subject for conversation to those people of the 
world unfitted for action, who spend their time 
in words that are all the more precise because 
of their unimportance. 

As for the poor people, whose greatest ambi¬ 
tions do not go beyond the next feast day, they 
see in this event only a chance for a gratuitous 
spectacle, or a reason to cry out: “Long live or 
Down with” someone which is, taking every¬ 
thing into consideration, the crux of all politi¬ 
cal doctrines. 

The restoration of Michel Provinkoff to the 
royal throne of Georgevia was, on the whole, 
generally approved of, and the return of the 
Prince gave cause for rejoicings which happily 
were marred by nothing unpleasant. 

There were, for the ordinary people, arches 
of triumph, a procession, a Te Deum, fire¬ 
works, a military review, and at the Royal Pal¬ 
ace banquets, receptions and concerts for the 
aristocracy. 

The Georgevians were happy to find in 
Michel the simple and kindly sovereign they 


88 


THE PRINCESS 


had known formerly, and to whom exile had 
added still more charm; certain people even 
noticed that, at times, when he did not know 
that he was being observed, his face appeared 
wan, his expression became strangely clouded, 
but they thought that in those days of joy, the 
monarch was recalling former hardships, and 
they loved him all the better for it. 

The women were deeply moved and touched 
by the intense passion that the King seemed to 
feel for his blonde fiancee, the Princess Olga 
Alexandrowna. In truth, he followed her un¬ 
ceasingly with his eyes, and his voice, when ad¬ 
dressing her, became adorably caressing. At 
every instant he took her hands and raised 
them to his lips; he always put himself in the 
background when she was present; he had even 
exacted that the conferences of the constituent 
assemblies should be held before her, contrary 
to etiquette and custom. 

The young girl, on her side, was radiant; 
one felt that she was thoroughly happy, and 
this happiness made the whole Court delight¬ 
fully good-humored. 

As for the Grand Duchess Marie, she ex- 


AND THE CLOWNS 


89 


ulted, she trembled, she raved. She repeated 
unceasingly to an admiring and respectful au¬ 
dience, the account of her escape, related in 
every direction the story of the moujik, con¬ 
siderably dramatized, and went out ten times 
a day under different pretexts, always accom¬ 
panied by Countess Orchapoff and General 
Kameniski, just for the sake of seeing her car¬ 
riage escorted by a squadron of Cossacks. 

However, the obsequious acclamations of the 
public finished by getting on her nerves, and 
while enjoying the immediate present, she was 
already looking forward to the pleasure that 
she would experience on returning as a royal 
personage to Paris after the marriage of her 
daughter. 

“For you know, Michel,” she said to her fu¬ 
ture son-in-law, “all your noblemen are block¬ 
heads and their wives beplumed turkeys; it is 
only in Paris, I declare to you, that people 
know how to speak to a ‘Highness.’ ” 

As a matter of fact, she disapproved of the 
democratic attitude adopted by the King since 
his accession to the throne, but that she never 
would have dared to say. 


90 


THE PRINCESS 


Truly, Michel I (when a Prince becomes a 
King he changes his number) Michel I had pro¬ 
claimed, the day of his entrance into Tchar- 
kowla, that he expected to be the father of his 
people, and what was more, in this he was sin¬ 
cere. So he was constantly seen walking alone 
in the streets and on the wharf, talking to the 
workmen, to the sailors, to the business men, 
to the peasants of the market-place, informing 
himself about their opinions, questioning them 
on the subject of their trade and encouraging 
criticisms on his government. He visited the 
manufacturers and the artists, and had long 
discussions with them. He took notes, studied 
statistics and in fact interested himself in every¬ 
thing. 

Not only did he encourage them to question 
him, even when they accosted him in the street, 
but all those, both Georgevians or foreigners, 
who wished to have a private interview with 
him, had only to inscribe their names at the 
house of the Governor of the Royal Palace. 

After these trips or on leaving functions, the 
King shut himself up with his minister Dobrow- 
ski and both of them worked for hours to¬ 
gether. From this intimate collaboration arose 


AND THE CLOWNS 91 


wise, liberal laws, often stamped with an au¬ 
dacious socialism which righteous people ac¬ 
cepted because they were promulagted with a 
royal signature, but which they never would 
have accepted coming from a democratic gov¬ 
ernment. 

The communists alone were the ones to com¬ 
plain, for if things continued in this manner, 
this extraordinary King would soon take away 
from their party its “raison d’etre.” 

Once again, as before, virtuosi were invited 
to the Court, where magnificant concerts took 
place; but, at present, the notable families of 
Tcharkowla were, in turn, invited to attend 
them; sometimes even, when in springtime these 
musical programs could be given under the 
great veranda of the Palace, the gates were 
opened so that the people might come and 
share these refined artistic pleasures. 

There was one personage, however, who did 
not function at all; that was the chief of police. 
In vain did he respectfully beg the King not to 
allow himself to be so easily accessible, in vain 
did he point out to him that the disturbed Bol¬ 
sheviks had sent agitators to Tcharkowla to 
stir up the dregs of the population, that inter- 


92 


THE PRINCESS 


national brood, the vermin of maritime towns; 
and he showed him the danger there was in 
leaving the Royal Palace without military 
guards. Michel I did not listen to him, or 
rather, only laughed at his fears which he 
treated as chimerical. 

“If only Your Majesty will permit me at 
least to arrest these sowers of discord,” im¬ 
plored the unhappy police-officer. 

“Impossible,” replied the King, “I cannot 
violate the laws that I have myself enacted to 
protect the liberty of the individual. Besides, 
I fear nothing from these people. Let us work 
with greater ardor to ameliorate unceasingly 
the fate of the working class, let us arrange so 
that each one may have his share of happiness; 
that will be our best defense. Happy people 
do not organize Revolutions.” 


If the Grand Duchess Marie Nicolaevna 
loudly condemned Michel’s manners toward his 
subjects, she did not, however, allow herself to 
make observations to him personally, nor even 
to give him advice. She had much too much 
respect for royalty; and then, her deceased hus- 


AND THE CLOWNS 


93 


band, the Ataman of the Cossacks of Adour 
had in their early married life, by a few oppor¬ 
tune flicks of a riding whip, inculcated her with 
the idea that women must keep quiet when the 
head of the family spoke. In the presence of 
her future son-in-law, therefore, she did not 
open her mouth on this subject; besides, when 
he fixed his sombre eyes upon her, she was over¬ 
come by a strange discomfort, and the words 
could not have come out of her mouth. She 
contented herself by making before him, 
whether she met him or passed him twenty 
times a day, three low solemn courtesies which 
caused her arthritical knees to crack, and this 
was but to demonstrate her attachment to old- 
time etiquette. 

Only, after having thus, for an entire day, 
restrained her imperative need of criticism, she 
made up for it in the evening on her unfortu¬ 
nate daughter, when they had both reached 
their apartments, which were situated at the 
opposite wing of the Palace from the one occu¬ 
pied by the King. 

Then there was an overflow of words, a tor¬ 
rent, or to be more exact, a deluge! 

‘‘My dear, your Michel is a madman, and I 


94 THE PRINCESS 

» 

really cannot understand how you allow him 
to act in this manner. One can enter this Pal¬ 
ace more easily than a ministry in France; this 
will get us into trouble one of these days, be¬ 
lieve me. I am exasperated. . .1 shall say even 
more. . .scandalized. There is less ceremony 
in this Court than in the house of a President 
of the Republic. Suppose I told you that, just 
now, one of those stupid Georgevians, wife of 
an officer moreover whom I had done the 
honor of receiving, took upon herself to leave 
my drawing-room turning her back upon me! 

. . . How can you expect a kingdom to exist 
under such conditions?. . .And the courtesies? 
Have you noticed the courtesies?.. .A little 
bob, my dear; one would say that all these ri¬ 
diculous geese have wooden feet. And the 
King says nothing; he seems to think that it’s 
perfect. Everyone squashes etiquette here. 
Well, I, for one, shall not give way, you can 
tell that to your Michel. He seems upset when 
I make a fuss before him; I don’t care; I shall 
continue to do so. Even though it does cause 
me great distress. But I am heroic. I shall 
suffer for tradition’s sake, and I would be will¬ 
ing to die taking this stand for the honor of it! 


AND THE CLOWNS 


95 


And the King? What can one say of a king 
who goes to chat with shop-keepers? Poor 
dear girl, you will not reign over a people but 
over a flock of sheep.” 

Unhappily for Marie Nicolaevna, the Prin¬ 
cess did not allow herself, as in Paris, to be 
crushed under this avalanche of reproaches and 
criticisms. She did not bow down any more 
to the old comedy of submission. She no longer 
consented to kiss her mother’s brow, saying as 
she did so: 

“You know what admiration your good sense 
inspires in me, I shall not fail to have recourse 
to your wisdom,” etc., etc. 

On the contrary, she could no longer bear to 
hear one disparaging word about her fiance, 
and, from the very start, retaliated violently, 
not heeding her mother’s cries of distress, nor 
the tears that she shed in abundance. 

Everything that the King did was well done, 
everything that he commanded was wise. 

It was simply that the sweet Princess was in 
love with Michel, truly in love, thoroughly in 
love like a woman of the people. She caught 
herself counting up the days that separated her 
from that of her marriage, and her adorable 


96 


THE PRINCESS 


face was covered with blushes which rendered 
it still more beautiful. 

She spent hours leaning her brow against the 
window pane, contemplating the preparations 
for the ceremony which was to take place in 
three weeks, Michel having decided not to get 
married until the social reforms, conceived by 
Dobrowski and himself, had been realized. At 
present, now that these had been staretd in 
earnest, he could at last dream of his own hap¬ 
piness, and had chosen the date of the 20th of 
April for the great and delightful event. 

Already road-builders were relaying the av¬ 
enue which leads from the Royal Palace to the 
Cathedral, workmen were whitewashing 
houses, or poles were being raised, painters ex¬ 
ecuted allegorical pictures and panels destined 
to proclaim on the passing of the procession the 
loyalty, confidence and love of the Georgevians. 
The entire city took on an aspect of rejoicing, 
and each day, from the country there arrived 
delegations, laden with humble and touching 
gifts for the sovereigns. 

Thus, right in the twentieth century, there 
was in the world a happy country, wisely gov¬ 
erned, a Princess and a King on the eve of 


AND THE CLOWNS 97 


their marriage who adored each other—an un¬ 
known thing, I believe, since the legendary 
times when fairies intervened in the affairs of 
men. 


Alas, it was written in the book of fate that 
our heroes should not reach the haven of hap¬ 
piness so easily, and that at the moment of 
entering it they would be once more assailed 
by an unforseen tempest which would break up 
their beautiful edifice like glass. A new trial 
was being reserved for them, a trial so terrible, 
so fantastic, so foolishly unlikely, that I hesi¬ 
tate to undertake the recital of it. I am afraid 
that the reader will begin to doubt me, that he 
will accuse me of deceiving him in presenting 
to him as a real fact and as something that 
happened, that which is, in reality, nothing but 
a dream of my delirious imagination. And, 
nevertheless, I am, at present, doing the work 
of an historian, or rather, since history is noth¬ 
ing but an accumulation of legends and false¬ 
hoods, the work of a sincere and disinterested 
chronicler. But I sense the fact that many will 
refuse to believe me. Well, so much the worse; 


98 


THE PRINCESS 


it is the lot of writers to be considered like en¬ 
tertainers who are not to be taken seriously, 
the simple-minded public reserving its trust for 
those who possess diplomas and relate gravely, 
each in a different way, the political life of all 
the countries of the world. 

I shall, therefore, bravely face the danger, 
fortified by my clear conscience. Posterity will 
do me justice. 


CHAPTER VI 


No, truly, no one could guess what was to 
happen on the day of the 15th of March, 1921. 
Even to-day, apart from two or three people, 
interested in hushing it up, and myself, who 
find it interesting to relate, no one yet suspects 
the brutal, rapid and unprecedented drama of 
which Michel of Georgevia and his gentle 
fiancee, Olga Alexandrowna, were the victims. 

The weather was, on that particular day, 
ideal; the incomparable weather of the ephem¬ 
eral oriental spring; the sun caressed with its 
vertical rays the eglantine and the acacias 
whose full buds were bursting with a little dry 
snap. Through the water in the harbor, which 
had become transparent, one could see the gray 
sand and streaks of an emerald shade showed 
here and there; near the beach some of the 
rocks were surrounded by a pinkish foam; a 


100 


THE PRINCESS 


light and perfumed breeze seemed to draw in its 
wake joyous sounds from the festive town that 
was dancing on the squares; hearts were di¬ 
lated with the great joy of life. 

The King, who had just received a Tartar 
delegation and accepted its offering of gaily 
tinted materials, had been obliged to show him¬ 
self three times on the balcony of the Royal 
Palace to the peasants of the steppe who 
greeted him. Then he returned with a joyful 
heart into his study, where Dobrowski awaited 
him in order to get his signature to the amnesty, 
which on the eve of the coronation, was to 
render liberty to all prisoners, as was the usual 
custom. He had even laughed heartily when 
his minister informed him, in a few words, that 
the Bolsheviks, having wished to organize a 
meeting, and having been refused all the halls 
in town by the Loyalists, he, Dobrowski, had 
immediately offered them one of the hangars 
belonging to the military aviation corps, and 
this had somewhat taken their breath away. 

No bad presentiment troubled his happiness 
and serenity. It was therefore, without the 
slightest anxiety that he gave orders to the 
officer in charge to show in the only person in- 


AND THE CLOWNS 101 


scribed that day for a personal interview; Mon¬ 
sieur Pierre Ducastel, a French subject passing 
through Tcharkowla. 

The officer opened the door, ushered him in 
and retired. The King stood up, as was his 
custom, and the stranger advanced toward him, 
making at the same time three deep, formal 
bows. 

He was a man of about thirty-six or thirty- 
seven years of age and rather tall (his build 
resembled that of the sovereign although he 
was of considerably heavier weight on account 
of his stoutness). Beads of perspiration 
showed on his forehead, which was already 
bared by a slight baldness, and a small blond 
mustache cut in the American style, gave a 
smart appearance to his face of which the fine 
cut features were well filled out. One could 
not see his eyes for he wore large bluish glasses. 

As he bowed again he shook the hand cor¬ 
dially that was extended him by the King, and 
waited to speak until the latter said to him: 

“You are welcome, sir; may I know to what 
cause I owe the pleasure of your visit?” 

The man then replied in a voice that betrayed 
no emotion: 


102 


THE PRINCESS 


“Sire, permit me first to express to Your 
Majesty the gratitude that I owe you for hav¬ 
ing been willing to grant me this interview. I 
have, to justify my audacity in having solicited 
it, nothing but the kindly protection given by 
Your Majesty to all artists, particularly to mu¬ 
sicians. I am, Sire, a concert pianist, even at 
times, a composer, and passing through Tchar- 
kowla, where I have been before, I conceived 
the ambitious dream of being heard by Your 
Majesty and by Her Highness, Princess Olga.” 

“That was an excellent idea,” said Michel 
joyfully, “and I thank you for your charming 
intention. Not only shall we be delighted, the 
Princess and I, to listen to you, but, besides 
that, I would like personally to play something 
with you. It is too rare a pleasure for me to 
let it slip by. Where are you staying?” 

“At the Hotel Saint Nicholas, Sire.” 

“Yes, it’s the only good one here. I will give 
orders that they call for your baggage present¬ 
ly, for I want you to stay at the Palace until 
the end of your sojourn at Tcharkowla, a so¬ 
journ which, I hope, will be a long one.” 

The stranger gave a start of surprise: 


AND THE CLOWNS 103 


“Oh! Sire, you embarass me. I would pre¬ 
fer, if Your Majesty would consent to it. . . ” 

Michel interrupted: 

“I consent to nothing. From this moment 
you are my guest and I shall not let you go.” 

He added, laughing: 

“Besides, it is an order!” 

Pierre Ducastel bowed: 

“In that case, Sire. . .” 

“Anyway,” the King added gaily as he rose, 
“you will not be at all uncomfortable here in 
my house, rest assured of that. Georgevia is 
not what people in Europe imagine, a country 
of savages, (you know something of it, since 
you tell me you have already been here), and 
the Royal Palace contains much to delight an 
artist, especially a French artist.” 

He took the man familiarly by the arm with 
that spontaneity which was his great charm, 
and led him to one of the high bay windows of 
his study. 

“See,” said he, “the apartment that I reserve 
for the guests of note that have consented to 
visit the Tartar King that I am overlooks this 
part of the park, which in my opinion is the 
most beautiful. On the other side, is the 


104 


THE PRINCESS 


kingdom of sunshine, blossoms and well laid 
out flower gardens. Here is the domain of 
shadows. These cypress trees, plane trees and 
sycamores, with their interlaced branches, form 
an opaque dome in which the artist who for¬ 
merly traced the plans of these gardens ar¬ 
ranged one single opening for light to illuminate 
the ruins of that Greek Temple consecrated to 
Love that you can perceive over there. Isn’t 
it marvelous?” 

“I quite share the opinion of Your Majesty; 
it is evidently the part of the park most suitable 
for the satisfaction of a soul that is given to 
solitary reveries.” 

“You will find up there,” continued the King, 
“a few beautiful canvases of the great Rus¬ 
sian master, Levitzki, among others, a repro¬ 
duction of the magnificent portrait that he 
painted of Catherine the second from memory 
for she would never pose for him, a portrait 
of which the original is still, I believe, at the 
Academy of Fine Arts at Petrograd.” 

“I know it,” murmured Ducastel. 

“You will also see, in the little drawing¬ 
room that leads out of your room, a charming 


AND THE CLOWNS 105 


picture by your French artist Watteau, and, in 
the study, a forceful Goya.” 

“One of the most beautiful that I have ever 
seen.” 

“Have you seen it?” 

“Yes, Sire, during the sojourn that I made 
at Tcharkowla before the war I obtained, as a 
special favor, the permission to visit the Pal¬ 
ace; it contains real masterpieces, and the 
Grand Duke, Nicholas of Georgevia, Your 
Majesty’s great great grand-father, who gath¬ 
ered together this unique collection, was a 
Prince gifted with excellent good taste. He did 
not commit the slightest error, and posterity 
has only certified his judgment.” 

“You are right, he must have been a re¬ 
markable man.” 

Ducastel continued: 

“But what is rarest here, to my mind, is the 
set of drawings by Michel Schibanow, which 
are to be found in this very study I believe. 
They are the only ones of this artist that have 
been preserved.” 

The King looked at the speaker with aston¬ 
ishment. 

“The drawings of Schibanow?” 


106 


THE PRINCESS 


“Your Majesty doubtless appreciates them 
as much as I, and I beg your gracious permis¬ 
sion to look at them for a few minutes after 
a lapse of so many years.” 

Michel I did not reply, for he had suddenly 
received the impression that something terrible 
was about to happen. 

In truth, it was at that moment that the 
drama took place. 

The man had turned toward the back of the 
room; he slipped the library ladder along on 
its rod, climbed up quickly, placed his hand with 
a decided gesture behind the books on the last 
shelf, pressed on a button that was hidden in 
the woodwork, and, immediately, an upper 
panel of the book case opened, exposing to view 
a set of leather cases which were covered with 
a thick layer of dust. 

While he drew the first carefully toward 
him, he said: 

“The hiding-place is good. The Grand Duke 
Nicholas had arranged it for he always feared 
that the Great Catherine might take away these 
drawings of his favorite painter. He knew her 
to be capable of anything to satisfy one of her 
wishes.” 


AND THE CLOWNS 107 


He turned around, and from the top of his 
ladder looked smilingly at the King. 

The latter, very pale, was leaning against 
the wall; after a moment of silence, he asked in 
a faint voice: 

“Will you tell me, Sir, how it happens that 
you know of this secret closet. . . this closet...” 

“Of which Your Majesty did not know the 
existence?” 

Michel gave a start. 

“That is to say. . .” 

But the man repeated in an assured voice: 

“Of which Your Majesty did not know the 
existence!” 

He came down then, approached the King 
and continued: 

“I will satisfy Your Majesty at once, since 
we are alone and no one can hear us. I know 
this hiding-place because I am Michel Provin- 
koff, the Grand Duke Michel of Georgevia. . . ” 

Instead of ringing for them to arrest this 
insolent man, or having them throw out this 
maniac, the Sovereign let himself fall into a 
chair, and then passed a damp, trembling hand 
over his forehead. 

The stranger had now taken off his glasses. 


108 


THE PRINCESS 


“If Your Majesty had occasion to see me in 
the past, you will, without doubt, be able to 
recognize me although I have changed a great 
deal. If you do not recall me I have here all 
the proofs.” 

He commenced to fumble in his pockets, but 
Michel stopped him with a gesture: 

“It is useless, I recognize Your Highness.” 


There was a long, a very long silence. 
Pierre Ducastel (we shall continue to call him 
this for convenience in this story) Pierre Du¬ 
castel, I say, had placed the leather case on the 
table and had opened it; now he was turning 
over the drawings of Schibanow, making from 
time to time low exclamations: “How beauti¬ 
ful that is!.,.What intense life!...All the 
true Russian soul is found in these drawings I” 
The King, with his head in his hands, thought 
of nothing but this Princess Olga. Tears came 
to his eyes, under which reappeared the violet 
shade of former times. 

Suddenly, he rose, took a few steps across 
the room, and placed his burning brow against 
one of the window-panes. Then, at last, he ad- 


AND THE CLOWNS 109 

vanced courageously toward his unexpected vis¬ 
itor. 

“I am at your disposal, Your Highness, I 
beg you to let me know what you wish of me.” 

Ducastel turned around: 

“What I wish of Your Majesty? But noth¬ 
ing, absolutely nothing...or at least, a very 
small thing: the simple satisfaction of a curi¬ 
osity, of which you will, without difficulty, un¬ 
derstand the legitimacy. But it is only courte¬ 
ous that I first satisfy that of Your Ma¬ 
jesty. . .” 

“I beg of Your Highness not to make fun 
of me...” 

“I am not making fun of you! And, first of 
all, Sire, I implore of you not to call me ‘Your 
Highness.’ I am, and only desire to be, Pierre 
Ducastel; there is here only one ‘Highness’ or 
rather one ‘Majesty’ which is yourself. It is 
the function which gives the title. Besides, 
in this very intimate conversation, I think it 
will be more convenient for both of us to 
neglect state formulas, if Your Majesty sees 
no objection.” 

The King fixed his eyes on the speaker, and 


110 


THE PRINCESS 


noticed that there was not the slightest ironical 
smile at the corner of his lips. 

Ducastel carelessly helped himself to a cig¬ 
arette from the royal bowl, lit it, slipped into 
an armchair, and continued as follows: 

“In the first place, my dear fellow, reassure 
yourself. I am certainly not coming to claim 
my place from you. Great Heavens, no! And 
if, as your first words seemed to imply, you 
should manifest the intention of giving it back 
to me, I should dash to the station and escape 
by the first train. On that, I give you my word 
of honor. I am a great deal too happy in my 
present condition, and I really have had so 
much trouble in finding true happiness to con¬ 
sider for a moment the thought of losing what 
I have had such difficulty in gaining. 

“You doubtless know, for you must have in¬ 
formed yourself most carefully, that I never 
had much taste or much inclination for the 
position of a Prince. I am both artist and 
bourgeois, which combination is found more 
often than you think. 

“Besides this, I fell in love long before the 
war with an exquisite French woman, by whom 


AND THE CLOWNS 111 


I have the honor of being loved. The rank 
in which chance had unfortunately placed me 
through birth barred my marrying her official¬ 
ly, and we had formed the plan of a morgan¬ 
atic marriage, when one day, the Czar my sov¬ 
ereign, expressed a desire, a desire which was 
an order, to see me give my name and my title 
to the daughter of his old friend the Grand 
Duke Alexander; that charming Princess Olga 
whom I had the pleasure of seeing again yes¬ 
terday as she was leaving the Palace in an auto¬ 
mobile. 

“Certainly, the fiancee that was proposed to 
me had all the attributes of mind and heart, 
all the bodily charms that I could wish for and 
I could have perhaps loved her, if my heart 
had not already been won by another. But 
anyway my heart was won and the wish ex¬ 
pressed by that poor Nicholas II, (may God 
rest his soul) was the downfall of all my hap¬ 
piness. 

“I am a man without force of character or 
will; on the other hand, brought up with in- 
transigeant monarchical ideas and forced from 
my infancy to adhere to the discipline of a 


112 


THE PRINCESS 


father without tenderness, I never conceived 
the idea of resisting the Emperor and still less 
of deserting the post that had been assigned 
me as did certain grand dukes of the House of 
Austria who were wise as proved by the events 
of to-day. I therefore went docilely to Saint 
Petersburg, while my companion, not wishing 
to be the means of casting me into disfavor, 
returned with a broken heart to her own coun¬ 
try where she soon had an alarming attack of 
nervous prostration. 

“Then the war broke out and three years 
later the Revolution. The latter offered too 
favorable a chance for me not to profit by it. 
The ancient throne of the Romanoffs’ was tot¬ 
tering, other kings were already shaking on 
theirs; a shadow-curtain suddenly separated 
my country from the entire world and the 
whole of the social order was changed. The 
executions, massacres, and assassinations, of 
which the number was daily increasing; the 
mysterious disappearances, the desperate flight 
of all the great personages, finally made possi¬ 
ble the realization of my dream. For my opin¬ 
ions had changed after facing so many frightful 


AND THE CLOWNS 113 


spectacles of human folly and I firmly resolved 
to attain my own happiness. 

“I therefore fled with my minister Dobrow- 
ski, spreading personally the report of my 
death, which happened to coincide with the 
strangling of some officers in my house, a 
strangling which as I read in the newspapers, 
you had also been able to make use of. 

“I was free. During this trip, I bought 
from a Bolshevik some papers belonging to a 
poor French business man they had just shot, 
and I managed without much difficulty to reach 
Sweden, then England, then France, where I 
found again the one who my heart had not 
been able to forget. 

“Since I was henceforth but Pierre Ducas- 
tel nothing prevented our marriage. It took 
place immediately. With the money that I 
had given to my wife at the time of our separa¬ 
tion and that which I had been able to send her 
at the first rumor of the Revolution and that 
which I had been able to carry away with me on 
my departure we bought a small house on the 
Cote d’Azur, between Marseilles and Toulon. 
It is there that we have been living for the 


114 


THE PRINCESS 


past four years alone with our immense hap¬ 
piness. I still play; I even gave a concert at 
Nice six months ago which was quite success¬ 
ful; two beautiful children have been born to 
us, two daughters registered under the name 
of Ducastel and who will never know that they 
have princely blood in their veins. 

“You see then that you have nothing to fear 
from me. Three people only are in the secret 
to-day: you, my wife, and I. You will not 
divulge it. Besides if you did so, no one would 
believe you. As for myself, to prove to you 
that I shall never change my mind and to with¬ 
draw myself from any possiblity of altering my 
decision I shall hand over to you presently when 
you have loyally answered the question I am 
going to put to you, the two or three proofs 
that I still possess of my true indentity. 

“As for the rest, my dear fellow, you are a 
much better chief than I for this country. Since 
my arrival in Georgevia, I hear your praises 
sung by everyone. Each one boasts of your in¬ 
telligence, your ardor in work, your simplicity, 
your goodness and if I have felt remorse for 


AND THE CLOWNS 115 


my pseudo-desertion it is to-day completely 
effaced.” 

Pierre Ducastel placed his extinct cigarette 
in the ash-tray and looked for a few seconds at 
the King, who, with his far-away eyes seemed 
not to have listened to him. 

He continued, raising his voice slightly so 
as to draw his companion from the revery into 
which he was plunged: 

“I have told you my story; it is now your 
turn to tell me yours. It is in order to hear it 
that I have undertaken this long trip. In 
truth, when I saw in the newspapers that I was 
not dead, I was at first horribly afraid, as I 
imagined I had been discovered by someone, 
but I was quickly reassured by the announce¬ 
ment of my arrival in Paris, by the accounts of 
the entertainments given in my honor and by 
the reading of the interviews I had granted the 
newspaper men. All my apprehensions definite¬ 
ly disappeared when I learned that I had once 
more ascended the throne of Georgevia. From 
that moment I felt nothing but a keen desire to 
know the man who had just substituted himself 
for me with so much audacity and intelligence. 


116 


THE PRINCESS 


“Yes, it is curious,” he added, as he scrutin¬ 
ized the king who was turning toward him, “we 
look pretty much alike; you have reproduced 
very successfully what my head looked like 
formerly, while on my side, I was doing my 
best to compose another, a task in which nature 
has been good enough to help me.” 

He smilingly showed his bald spot. 

“You look a great deal like what those who 
knew me formerly might have pictured. An 
intimate friend would not have been fooled 
perhaps, but all my friends are dead; you are 
lucky. 

“Therefore here I am facing myself. It is 
a curious sensation to see oneself thus. Only 
in your person, I have become thin, and in 
mine I have put on weight. But what odds, 
that’s good luck. Still I laugh when I think 
that if I had presented myself in society with¬ 
out proofs of my identity people would un¬ 
doubtedly have treated me as an impostor. Let 
us enjoy together, if you are willing, the irony 
of the situation.” 

He burst into a joyous child-like, slightly 
ordinary laugh, which made Michel I frown 
imperceptibly. 


AND THE CLOWNS 117 


“Come I have chatted enough, I am a ter¬ 
rible talker. Now I pass the conversation on to 
you. Tell me I beg of you, my dear fellow, 
who you are, or rather who I am.” 


As he finished these words, a blast of trum¬ 
pets burst forth in front of the Palace, and a 
formidable cry of “Long live the King!” shook 
the window panes of the study. 

The officer in charge entered almost imme¬ 
diately and said: 

“Sire, it is the athletic societies of the town 
that wish to salute Your Majesty. It would be 
advisable to grant them this pleasure.” 

The sovereign rose nervously: 

“I have not the time! Beg of them to go 
away.” 

“Oh! Sire,” cried Ducastel, “do not refuse 
these good people the happiness of contem¬ 
plating for a moment the man they consider, 
with just cause, the father of the people, the 
organizer and the guardian of social order. I 
should never forgive myself if I were the in¬ 
voluntary cause of their disappointment.” 

He had opened the wnndow and from the 


118 


THE PRINCESS 


terrace was already making a sign to the crowd 
that the King was coming. His face expressed 
a sincere emotion, and Michel, advancing on 
to the balcony heard him murmur: “It is truly 
a very fine thing to be a leader.” 


When the ceremony was ended, when the 
sounds of the trumpets, which were going 
away, faded in the distance, the King came back 
to the Grand Duke. 

“I am not, sir, as you would have every right 
to imagine, an arrant adventurer, and I shall 
tell you presently how I was led, almost in spite 
of myself, to act this dangerous part in which 
you see me at present. My parents were hon¬ 
orable commercial people, who gave me a per¬ 
fect education. Having shown a marked 
musical vocation from my earliest childhood, I 
was admitted into the Conservatory at Mos¬ 
cow, out of which I brought a first violin prize 
two years later. Engaged in the orchestra of 
the Imperial Theatre at Saint Petersburg, I 
remained there five years, first as a substitute, 
then as second and finally as first violinist. 

“A cruel sickness then came to spoil my 


AND THE CLOWNS 119 


career. A strange nervous depression, com¬ 
plicated by a cerebral anemia, and complete 
debility, accompanied by a considerable dim¬ 
ness of sight, kept me in my rom for fourteen 
months. The meagre pittance inherited from 
my parents enabled me to live and take care of 
myself during that time, but, when I recovered 
from this attack, I found myself without money 
and without a position. I replaced several or¬ 
chestra men in different theatres, I even played 
in restaurants, but I did not succeed in finding 
a permanent position. I was beginning to de¬ 
spair, when one day, I heard through a pub¬ 
lisher, that the Grand Duke Michel of George- 
via was looking for a man capable of making 
some musical scores, and enough of a musi¬ 
cian to transpose certain compositions, if neces¬ 
sary. I offered myself and was accepted. It 
was then that I came, for the first time, to 
Tcharkowla.” 

“I have it,” cried Ducastel, “it seemed to me 
that those eyes were not unfamiliar.” 

“Oh! I only had the opportunity of speak¬ 
ing to Your Highness once, when you asked me 
to transcribe a melody that you had just com¬ 
posed. The rest of the time, I was in sole 


120 THE PRINCESS 

communication with the Lord Chamberlain.” 
lain.” 

“Yes, poor Korostine who was killed during 
the war. All the same your appearance made 
an impression on me. Now I recognize that 
wan looking man who kept himself aloof and 
seemed to be burning up with fever.” 

The King continued: 

U A few months later, the war started. I 
left in a regiment of the infantry, but my health 
did not permit me to withstand very long the 
strenuous existence at the front; at the end of 
a year and a half after having dragged from 
hospital to hospital my health was restored. I 
then knew frightful misery until the day when 
the idea came to me of getting up an act as a 
musical clown. I managed in this way, to make 
a livelihood with difficulty. At the time of the 
Revolution I was in Norway. In the circus 
where I was acting there was another Russian 
clown like myself, with whom I became very 
friendly. We combined forces and arranged 
between us a series of scenes which were imme¬ 
diately a great success. After the Armistice 
we obtained an engagement in London, then 
in Brussels and finally in Paris. There is all 


AND THE CLOWNS 121 


my story. You see, Monsieur, that it is very 
commonplace.” 

“It is most interesting! So then, I am re¬ 
placed on the throne of Georgevia by a musi¬ 
cal clown. The paradox does not displease me; 
quite on the contrary, it pleases me enormously. 
You are a straightforward man, having suf¬ 
fered in life, having known misery and having 
retained from all these vicissitudes with which 
you have been overpowered nothing but the 
greatest pity for poor humanity. It is per¬ 
fect, I could wish for nothing better. But all 
that you have just told me does not explain how 
you jumped from the track to the throne.” 

“It is not, I give you my word of honor, 
either interest or ambition nor is it even the 
taste for adventure that led me to this substi¬ 
tution. Love alone is the cause of the extra¬ 
ordinary epic that I have just lived, I repeat it 
to you, almost in spite of myself.” 

“Love? This becomes passionate.” 

“When I was in the orchestra of the Opera 
at Saint Petersburg, I saw entering the Imperial 
box one evening, an adorably beautiful young 
girl. I know there are people who deny what 
is commonly called love at first sight, and I 


122 


THE PRINCESS 


myself, often wondered previous to that day, 
how one could possibly love suddenly and for 
life a woman of whom, a moment before, one 
knew not the existence. The invention of a 
novelist, I used to say. 

“However, hardly had I cast my eyes on the 
one who had just appeared, and who with a 
bright face, radiant with pleasure, smiled at 
the friends that she recognized in the Hall, 
than I felt myself overwhelmed. A mist came 
over my eyes and I thought I was going to 
faint. My heart beat as if it would break and 
a delightful anguish clutched at my throat. 

“When I managed to master myself I quiet¬ 
ly asked my neighbor if he knew the people in 
the Imperial box. ‘They are,’ he said to me, 
‘the Grand Duke Alexander, the Grand Duch¬ 
ess Marie and the Princess Olga Alexan- 
drowna.’ 

“At that moment the young girl who was 
moving about and laughing a great deal, on 
turning around toward her parents, dropped 
her gold purse which fell at my feet. I picked 
it up, and without worrying about etiquette, I 
went up to the box; an officer stopped me in 
the passage way and took the purse from me. 


AND THE CLOWNS 123 


“I went back to my place in despair as if 
some great misfortune had happened to me. 
But the Princess, leaning over toward me, made 
a gesture of thanks with her hand, accompanied 
by a pretty smile which filled my soul with sun¬ 
shine. 

“What can I say to you? From that very 
day I thought of no one but the beautiful Prin¬ 
cess that I had seen. Nothing could banish 
from my heart that absurd, hopeless love. I 
felt a constant twinging pain which ended by 
troubling my mind. 

“One evening while hidden in the shadow of 
a house, I waited two hours in the snow with¬ 
out heeding the cold, in hopes of catching a 
glimpse of the one who obsessed my heart, I 
felt an agonizing torpor come over me and I 
fell to the ground. You know the rest. I 
recovered from the illness that had overtaken 
me, but I did not succeed in forgetting the one 
who had caused it. Fate had planned that I 
see her again at Tcharkowla, as the fiancee of 
the Grand Duke of Georgevia and my heart 
bled once more. During the war I did not 
stop thinking of her. At the time of the Revo¬ 
lution I suffered all the terrors of anguish. 


124 


THE PRINCESS 


Then I believed the Princess had been assas¬ 
sinated, and I wept as if she had been my life’s 
companion.” 

The King remained silent for a few minutes 
overcome by his past emotion and then he 
continued his story, relating to his unexpected 
visitor his surprise and emotion when he saw 
Olga during a performance at the Olympia, the 
idea that came to him of playing, in order to 
recall the past to her, that melody of the Grand 
Duke formerly copied by him, the fainting spell 
of the young girl and, at last, following a desire 
expressed by her, their first interview in the 
avenue of the “Bois de Boulogne.” 

“In going to meet her,” he added, “I was 
both joyous and desperate; joyous at being able 
to approach her, to address her for the first 
time, desperate, when I thought that after this 
brief interview, when she understood that I 
could give her none of the information she 
counted on, everything would be at an end. To 
have believed her dead, to find her again, then 
to lose myself in the crowd and live once more 
in the bitterness, rancor and jealousy with 
which I had been tortured for so many years; 
that is what awaited me. 


AND THE CLOWNS 125 


“A bitter revolt surged within me, while, at 
the same time, an unformed desire took hold of 
me to conquer fate and overcome destiny. How 
can I explain to you what happened then? The 
Princess is a being of extreme sensitiveness. 
She nourished within her, against all likelihood, 
the hope that the members of the Imperial fam¬ 
ily were not all dead, that the return of one of 
them would restore to her the position that she 
formerly held. She was prepared for the most 
romantic accounts, she awaited and solicited 
them and believed in them before hearing them 
spoken of. I understood that suddenly as I 
gazed into her dreamy eyes, as they sparkled 
in their orbits.” 

“It was then,” interrupted Ducastel, “that 
you told her you were the Grand Duke 
Michel?” 

“I never told her that, sir, but while she was 
talking to me a sudden irrational temptation 
crossed my mind, that of suggesting it, of mak¬ 
ing her see in me her former fiance, of creating 
this image in her brain, and of making her say 
that I was Michel of Georgevia . . . For you 
must know this: the strange malady from which 
I had suffered for more than a year had left 


126 


THE PRINCESS 


me a mysterious power of fascination. I cer¬ 
tainly always had a strong will that permitted 
me to fight against adversity, but it did not 
demonstrate itself outwardly, as I might say, 
as it does to-day. From the moment that I 
got up I perceived that I had acquired the in¬ 
explicable faculty of creating around me a 
magic zone, such as the fakirs of India are said 
to do. 

“It is this power that I made use of when I 
played on the stage; and if, since my accession 
to the throne of Georgevia, I may be seen con¬ 
stantly visiting the notable people of the coun¬ 
try, talking first to one then to the other, it is 
not only because I am desirous of filling satis¬ 
factorily a position that has been, on the whole, 
usurped, but also because every individual on 
whom I fix my eyes is definitely conquered.” 

“That is truly something very remarkable,” 
cried Ducastel, “and I understand now to what 
extent you are loyal to me when I realize that 
not once, since I admitted my true identity, have 
you fixed your eyes upon me.” 

“I thank you, sir, for having been good 
enough to take note of that.” 


AND THE CLOWNS 127 


“But did you exercise your power over the 
Princess Olga?” 

“I confess that I did. But hardly had I suc¬ 
ceeded in this foolish enterprise, than I re¬ 
pented and tried to efface the vision I had 
created. Alas, I did not succeed in doing so. 
This illusion responded too closely to the secret 
desires of Olga Alexandrowna. In order not 
to lose her for ever, I found myself obliged to 
follow the track on which I had so imprudently 
started. 

“That is why, sir I happen to be the King of 
Georgevia to-day.” 

The true Grand Duke, who had just taken 
another cigarette, leaned back in his armchair, 
and after having reflected a few seconds: 

“You have just told me, my dear fellow, one 
of the prettiest and most touching love stories 
that can possibly be conceived. It has definitely 
confirmed the spontaneous sympathy that you 
inspired in me at first sight. I regret not being 
able to permanently establish a bond of friend¬ 
ship with you. At any rate, when I return to 
my hermitage, I shall take with me the com¬ 
forting assurance that I have been replaced by 
a man who is at the same time bold and wise, 


128 


THE PRINCESS 


courageous in adversity, firm and kindly when 
in command, possessing magic inspiration, a 
gift from Heaven for those who have to com¬ 
mand, in other words a leader. It is, there¬ 
fore, with the greatest joy in the world and 
with no regrets that I turn the family papers 
over to you which I am anxious to get rid of, 
and which will be of service to you if ever any¬ 
one tries to cast a doubt on your authenticity, 
an eventuality which is certainly not to be con¬ 
templated.” 

He drew from his pocket an envelope that 
was carefully sealed and placed it on the King’s 
desk. 

“Now,” he said, “I have but to thank you 
for this interview which has been a lengthy 
one. Nevertheless, dear friend, (you will per¬ 
mit me to call you this, won’t you?) never¬ 
theless, I have a great desire to accept your 
kind proposal of a few moments ago and come 
to spend two or three days in thus Palace, so 
as to live old memories over again, before leav¬ 
ing for ever this country to which I am still 
attached by some sentimental fibres. Be good 
enough then, to give the necessary orders.” 

By all means,” replied Miche$ I, whose ex- 


AND THE CLOWNS 129 


pression still remained thoughtful. “I shall 
also have need to converse further with you 
when I have pulled myself together and re¬ 
flected.” 

He was going to ring, when Ducastel stopped 
him with a gesture. 

“Just a moment. I almost forgot to ask you 
another question, evidently less important than 
the first, but which naturally piques my curi¬ 
osity. Pardon my carelessness. Tell me, I 
pray you, who is your minister Dobrwoski? 
For my Dobrowski is dead. Of that, I am, 
alas certain, since I had the sorrow of closing 
his eyes and accompanying him to his last rest¬ 
ing place. I would not be sorry to know from 
whence comes this man who is substituting 
himself in his place.” 

“Oh! that’s very simple,” replied the King, 
“and I am surprised that you have not yet 
guessed it. That Dobrowski is the comrade 
of whom I spoke to you just now, who became 
my friend when we found ourselves to be in 
the same Norwegian circus, and with whom I 
associated later. In the act of Michalis and 
Partner, he was Partner and I was Michalis. 
Nothing has changed.” 


130 


THE PRINCESS 


“Admirable, really admirable. Then your 
Prime Minister is . . .” 

“A clown!.. .Yes, sir. But not a chance 
clown like myself, no, a true clown, a clown 
since his youth. It is owing to this that he 
travelled over the world for thirty years, en¬ 
gaged turn by turn in all the circuses in Russia, 
Germany, Austria, France, England, America, 
Australia and even Japan. Intelligent, rarely 
talkative, but very curious, observing, and 
prone to meditation, he has acquired for him¬ 
self a wisdom that the knowledge of humanity 
has been the means of increasing. He is a very 
good statesman.” 

“Well, well,” murmured Ducastel with ad¬ 
miration, “that is wdiat we hereditary princes 
would never have dared to do, that is what we 
could not have done; take a clown as a Min¬ 
ister. And, however, never has this country 
been better governed, never has it known 
greater prosperity. This war and these dis¬ 
turbances, of which it was the cause, have 
upset the most preconceived ideas. Trades¬ 
people, workmen even, have become clever 
officers, and they say that the government of 
the Soviets has discovered in a Sergeant an ex- 


AND THE CLOWNS 131 


cellent cavalry general. It is not surprising, 
on the whole, to see a clown at the head of 
the government of this country. Anyway,” 
said he after a pause, “I do not regret my trip.” 

He went toward the desk and pressed on the 
bell, but at once apologized. 

“Oh! I beg your pardon. How quickly one 
falls back to former habits in a place that is 
familiar.” 

The officer in charge entered. Michel gave 
him his orders concerning the reception of 
Monsieur Pierre Ducastel, and the latter re¬ 
tired walking backwards, according to etiquette, 
not without having said to the King who ex¬ 
tended his hand to him: 

“I am overcome by the honor that Your Ma¬ 
jesty is conferring on me by granting me this 
interview, and I beg of you to deign to accept 
the assurance of my respectful devotion.” 


CHAPTER VII 

When the former Grand Duke had gone 
out, the King fell into an armchair, and, with 
his head in his hands, began to dream. A 
frightful anguish clutched at his heart, not 
that he experienced the slightest fear, for his 
visitor had appeared sincere and the papers 
left by him there on the desk were a proof 
of his good faith; besides, Michel possessed 
a brave heart which knew no fear; but this 
unexpected revelation, the sight of the one 
whose name and title he bore at present, ren¬ 
dered keener a thought which had already 
been torturing him for a long time, and which 
sometimes gave him the sombre air noticed 
by his intimate friends. 

The Princess Olga loved him. That fact 
he certainly could not doubt. Each day 
brought him a new assurance of it. The face 
132 


AND T HE CLOWNS 133 


of the young girl brightened with joy as soon 
as he approached her, she leant with confidence 
on his arm when they walked together in the 
flowered park of the Palace, she asked his 
advice on every subject, she listened to him 
with rapture when, in the evening, he played 
for her alone on his violin; she approved of 
all his decisions and the rumor of the disputes 
she had had with her mother had reached his 
ears. Therefore, she loved him! But who 
did she love in him: the man or the Prince? 
By what was she seduced: by his intelligence 
or by his physique? Would she love him if 
he were disfigured tomorrow, would she love 
him if he were no longer a King? 

Such were the questions that he had been 
asking himself for several months. 

Evidently he was in the wrong, for the mo¬ 
ment any man places himself face to face with 
this problem the solution of which can no more 
be found than the quadrature of the circle, it 
is all over for ever with his moral repose. 
Love is a fragile sentiment that one runs the 
risk of breaking in attempting to analyze it 
and the heart of a woman never reveals its 
mystery. And besides, what is the good of 


134 


THE PRINCESS 


this curiosity? Isn’t happiness nothing but a 
charming illusion? Isn’t one perfectly happy 
when one really imagines oneself to be so? 

Even though we should succeed in discov¬ 
ering just how much we were loved, where 
would be the advantage? Whatever be the 
cause of it, this research cannot, in my opinion, 
procure anything but rancor and disillusion¬ 
ment, for it is probable that, being endowed 
with unlimited masculine fatuity, each one of 
us would find that we are not loved as much 
as we deserve to be. It is, therefore, prefer¬ 
able to nurse one’s self-respect with illusions 
which, on the whole, are perhaps very often 
the truth. 

Yes but very few individuals are ever placed 
in the position in which the good King of Geor- 
gevia found himself, and one can easily under¬ 
stand that, having taken on the personality of 
someone else, he did not reason things out 
like the rest of us. 

“For, on the whole,” he said to himself, “the 
Princess knew the Grand Duke, she was his 
fiancee, and it may be that her love for me 
was solely the prolongation of her love for 
him... I do not think so. . .No. . .She saw 


AND THE CLOWNS 135 


too little of him before the war and under 
conditions that were too strained to have been 
able to fall deeply in love with him. But after 
all, I know nothing about it. Can I accept 
the tenderness intended for another?” 

These scruples had always haunted Michel’s 
mind, but they harassed him still more now 
that he knew that the man whose part he was 
acting on this earth still lived. 

He certainly did not have the right to re¬ 
veal the existence of this prince who, volun¬ 
tarily had passed for dead, and who was en¬ 
joying perfect happiness under cover of a bor¬ 
rowed name. But could he in all honesty 
usurp with Olga Alexandrowna, whose feel¬ 
ing of caste, prejudices, and inveterate belief in 
divine right he knew, these titles and this aris¬ 
tocratic past that she cherished in him? 

You will tell me that these scruples should 
have come to him sooner. That is very true. 
But don’t forget that our poor hero was in 
love, that he had loved hopelessly for so many 
years, that he almost died from this passion, 
and that at the idea of once more undergoing 
those tortures of the past, he, brave as he 
was, lacked courage. Put yourself in his 


136 THE PRINCESS 

place. After all he did no harm or wrong to 
anyone. 

Good, but then why, on the 15th of April, 
1921, when Monsieur Pierre Ducastel left his 
study, did he suddenly experience this impera¬ 
tive desire to reveal to his fiancee the trickery 
of which she had been the dupe? 

It was very complex. An attack of con¬ 
science?. . .Yes, to a certain extent. But above 
all, discomfort in knowing that in the world 
someone was posted on this fact, and that this 
someone was just the one that he represented. 

Understand me. . .Before this visit, Michal- 
is, (it hurts me to have to give him back his 
name, but however I must do it) Michalis had 
finished by really developing into Michel of 
Georgevia. Knowing the Grand Duke to be 
alive, it was a part that he was going to act; at 
every moment of his life he would ask himself: 
“Is this all right?” He would also think, 
“What does he think of me, the other one, the 
real one?” And then a new feeling was being 
born in him—oh! still very vaguely—a feeling 
that put a flame into his eyes and a slight al¬ 
most imperceptible smile at the corners of his 
lips. Having seen “the other,” “the real one,” 


AND THE CLOWNS* 137 


he felt his strength. Do you understand? He 
sensed his own value, a very decided sense; 
he deemed himself worthy of the post that he 
occupied, and began to find it right and just 
that he had replaced this big affable man. He 
saw in this event the will of Providence, and 
the wish seized him now to triumph for his 
own sake, to hoist on the shield his own per¬ 
sonality, not in the eyes of a people incapable 
of understanding, nor of those worldly people 
little apt to sense the beauty of such an ascen¬ 
sion, but in the eyes of the one whom he loved 
and whose esteem alone mattered to him. If 
she knew, and if knowing she approved, little 
did the deceiving of others concern him, he 
would be really himself. 

While he meditated in this manner, evening 
had come on little by little, and shadows, 
without his realizing it, had invaded the royal 
chamber, a violet shadow, on which trembled 
the golden glow of the setting sun from which 
the Sea beyond was burning. 

It is at this hour that phantoms of imagina¬ 
tion become definite, it is then that everything 
appears possible. 

How dangerous are those evenings in the 


138 


THE PRINCESS 


Orient! The damp vapor which comes out of 
the soil and draws with it all the perfumes of 
the flowers from their half-open blossoms, 
troubles the soul with a drowsy intoxication, 
dreams come and go, and alluring mirages 
dance before one’s eyes. There is no tired 
porter overcome by fatigue, leaning against 
the bales on the quay, who does not think 
himself a great lord, no beggar who is not 
certain of meeting the generous Caliph from 
whom he will receive a purse of gold, no gypsy 
who does not count on soon being carried away 
by a charming prince, no jew who does not see 
himself a banker, no king who does not expect 
love. A furtive murmur hums through the 
darkness; it is formed by the golden words 
that are mumbled through the teeth of the 
passers-by lost in their reveries, drawn away 
from reality and already acting the parts that 
they are sure of playing tomorrow. 

Oh! Orient, marvelous magician, thou alone 
allowest men to reach death without ever hav¬ 
ing despaired of life! 

The strong soul of Michalis (Heavens, how 
it grates against me to have to call him this) 
already softened by the intense emotion that 


AND THE CLOWNS 139 


he had just undergone, was captivated by this 
allurement like the soul of a poet. It is true 
that nothing is closer to the poet than the 
man of action. The former dreams his dream, 
the latter sees it, which is on the whole the 
same thing. 

So the King came out of his study with his 
face illuminated by a joyous resolution, like all 
people who are about to commit a colossal 
stupidity. 

There was a “fete” that evening at the 
Royal Palace; a concert under the large ver¬ 
anda. Michel I showed himself more charm¬ 
ing, more seductive than ever, showering his 
alluring, smiling affability and the sympathy of 
his glance on all those present, from the high¬ 
est lords, officers, artists and notable person¬ 
ages to the smallest tradespeople and peasants, 
who kept themselves respectfully silent in the 
park. He introduced with graciousness the 
French musician Pierre Ducastel to the Grand 
Duchess Marie and to Princess Olga, and 
smiled to see that the latter had not been the 
slightest bit disturbed and had not sensed a 
trace of suspicion in the presence of this man. 

Pierre Ducastel, at the request of the sov- 


140 


THE PRINCESS 


ereign, played two classical airs on his violin. 
He was applauded out of politeness, for his 
talent appeared quite mediocre to all present. 
In short, everything went off without a hitch. 

At about eleven o’clock in the evening when 
the guests had left, the King, still smiling and 
sure of himself, begged his charming fiancee 
to grant him a few minutes’ interview and 
drew her into his study where the drawings of 
Schibanow that had come from the red leather 
case were still spread on the table. 

The night had become suddenly black, dark 
clouds chased through the skies, veiling the 
moon and a stormy wind was coming down 
from the Caucasus, covering the sleepy town 
with clouds of dust, tearing off the leaves from 
the trees, bending down to earth the slender 
stems of the flowers and carrying off in its 
whirlwinds the mirages of the twilight. The 
sewers of Tcharkowla exhaled fetid odors, a 
dog moaned a death-like howl quite near the 
Palace. 

This brutal contact with reality shattered 
the confidence of the unfortunate Michalis. 
He passed a damp hand over his forehead, 


AND THE CLOWNS 141 


on which stood beads of perspiration and he 
instinctively felt that he was lost. 

But you know how brave our man was. 
His courage even went as far as temerity. 
The idea of drawing back never occurred to 
him for an instant; besides, a mysterious 
strength was pushing him on. He remem¬ 
bered a night similar to this, that he had spent 
in 1914 under a furious bombardment. As on 
this evening, he had been afraid, the tempta¬ 
tion of running away had taken hold of him; 
he had resisted, however, had leaned against 
the wall of a house in ruins and for several 
hours he had remained standing, looking dan¬ 
ger straight in the face. Neither would he 
weaken to-day. 

Having seated Princess Olga, he began to 
talk as he strode up and down without ever 
casting on his listener the forceful look of 
which he knew the power. It was a challenge 
thrown to destiny. 

He once again told) the young girl in a 
strained voice which choked him of his intense 
love, his deep tenderness, his devotion to her, 
capable if needs be of being carried to the point 
of sacrificing his life. He recalled to her the 


142 


THE PRINCESS 


matinee at the Olympia where they had found 
each other, their mutual emotion, their inter¬ 
views, the confession that she had drawn from 
him, the words said by him at the station at 
the moment when he was leaving for this re¬ 
treat which was to precede the revelation of 
his miraculous return, those words which you 
certainly must recall. 

“Let it be done, dear Princess, as you de¬ 
sire. But, I beg of you not to forget that 
your repeated insistences alone have persuaded 
me to declare to the world that I am the Grand 
Duke Michel of Georgevia. It is for your sake, 
it is in order not to lose you for ever that I 
have consented to brave everything in order 
to mount the throne. Remember this, Olga 
Alexandrowna.” 

At this instant he stopped, nervously un¬ 
hooked the high collar of his tunic, half opened 
the window and breathed in the warm night 
air. 

Olga had listened to him, at first smiling, 
then astonished, and now she remained immov¬ 
able, her heart tightening, anxious, distressed, 
forseeing a misfortune. 

He came quickly to her, and then in rapid 


AND THE CLOWNS 143 


halting words, he revealed the whole truth to 
her, save the existence of the real Grand Duke 
which was not his secret. 

“No, I am not Michel Provinkoff,” he cried 
to her with a kind of foolish pride. “I am 
more, much more than that; I am a man, a 
man who clutched at the throat by fate, has 
known how to fight and conquer. Upheld 
by my courage, by my intelligence, and above 
all, by the great love that I have in my heart, 
the love of you, I escaped from my obscure per¬ 
sonality: I have made out of the poor little 
musician in Moscow, the clown Michalis, a 
King and perhaps, the best of government 
leaders. Tomorrow, if you still retain for me 
your confidence and your tenderness, I feel that 
I shall accomplish immense things for the good 
of humanity. I shall gather around me all the 
men of good will, all the workers, all the 
lovers of order. I shall overcome these fools 
who, dishonoring admirable socialism, that true 
policy of the heart, dream of crushing their 
contemporaries under the most frightful 
tyranny.” 

He talked and talked, caught by his own 
eloquence and by the enthusiasm which uplifted 


144 


THE PRINCESS 


him, making his face radiant, that pale face 
with flashing eyes. 

But Olga Alexandrowna did not look at him 
any more. She had hidden her eyes with her 
hands after having given an agonizing cry. 
She did not weep : no, she was filled with shame, 
a shame which, quickening the pulsations of her 
heart, made the arteries in her temples throb 
so hard that Michalis suddenly saw only two 
bluish furrows palpitating there beneath the 
strands of blonde hair. 

Then he stopped talking and fell into an 
armchair like a condemned man, for, before 
she had said a single word, he had understood 
the sentence that she was going to pronounce 
upon him. 

The Princess had receded to the door, with 
an expression of disgust and fright. All the 
prejudices of her caste, all the principles that 
she valued as the honor of her life, seethed 
within her and indignation choked her. 

Just as she was going out, she turned around 
and said in a low voice, but in such a terrible 
tone that poor Michalis shuddered at it: 

“Miserable man. . .You dared. . .What ig¬ 
nominy!... Leave me!...Fly!.You fill 



AND THE CLOWNS 145 


me with horror! . . . Go away, disappear! ... I 
am willing that you should have this means of 
saving your life. . . But if, tomorrow morning 
you are still here, confronting your falsehood, 
I shall publicly reveal the infamy that you have 
committed. You will be dragged from this 
throne that you desecrate, and stoned like a 
mad-dog.” 

Michalis leapt under the insult but Olga 
had disappeared and now she ran as one de¬ 
mented toward her apartments where she bolt¬ 
ed herself in. 

Happily for her the Grand Duchess Marie 
had gone, after the concert, in an automobile 
with some friends to have supper on the out¬ 
skirts of Tcharkowla; she was only to return 
late that night. 

Alone, the poor little Princess began to cry 
convulsively, all her tiny person was shaken 
with great sobs. Then when the first crisis 
had passed, she walked up and down in her 
room with sounds of anger. A common man 
had played a trick on her, Olga Alexandrowna, 
the daughter of the Grand Duke Alexander, 
Ataman of the Cossacks of Adour, on her, the 
cousin of the Czar! He had deceived her, 


146 


THE PRINCESS 


ridiculed her, he had made use of her, of her 
prestige, of her relations, by the boldest kind 
of deception, for the most scandalous usurpa¬ 
tion, the most monstrous crime of high treason. 
A common man, what am I saying ... a clown, 
a mountebank, a fool! 

She tapped her foot with rage and seizing 
the portrait of the King which was on a table 
she threw it to the ground, and stamped on it 
until the frame, glass and photograph were 
broken and torn to a thousand pieces. 

But this person had not contented himself 
with such infamy; he had done worse, he had 
used his false personality in order to speak of 
love to a daughter of the Imperial blood and to 
make himself loved by her, yes, to make him¬ 
self loved. For, (oh, how she blushed at this 
minute) she had experienced for him a very 
tender feeling. 

She wiped her lips so violently with her 
handkerchief that she made them bleed, her 
poor little lips that had received the kisses of 
this monster and that, more infamous still, had 
given them back to him. 

Then she began to weep again but this time 
softly, sadly. It seemed to her that her 


AND THE CLOWNS 147 


broken heart was flooding her face with her 
tears. For, in spite of herself, in spite of her 
pride, her anger, her indignation, her disgust 
for herself, she could not dismiss the haunting 
obsession of those kisses whose sweetness still 
troubled her. 

A great despair suddenly invaded her and 
letting herself slip down on the floor by the 
torn photograph, she found herself murmuring 
“What a pity!” 

This hurt her so deeply that she searched 
for something with which she might kill her¬ 
self. But a new flood of tears overcame her, 
and she remained there prostrated on the soft 
carpet of her room, her mind a blank, her 
limbs painful; the tension of her nerves had 
given way all of a sudden. 


As for Michalis, he had fallen in a heap in 
front of the door, out of which all of his ador¬ 
able dreams had just fled. 


CHAPTER VIII 

When he recovered from his fainting 
spell, the King (excuse me for calling him this 
but it consoles me a little) the King, I say, got 
up, rang the bell, and an officer entered. 

“Go, I beg of you, and tell the Count Dob- 
rowski to come and talk with me immediately.” 

The officer hurried out, and a few minutes 
later, the Minister appeared on the threshold 
of the royal study. 

“Your Majesty did me the honor of asking 
for me?” 

“Yes, Count.” 

Dobrowski advanced; a footman closed the 
door behind him. 

“Excuse me for having disturbed you so 
late,” continued the Monarch, “I needed to see 
you concerning grave matters.” 

The President of the Council (whom, by the 
148 


AND THE CLOWNS 149 


way, I hardly know what to call, for I am un¬ 
aware at this time of his real name) the Minis¬ 
ter of State, Dobrowski, Partner, finally 
raised his head with a surprised air; in truth, it 
had been arranged between his accomplice and 
himself (accomplice is perhaps overstating 
things, let us say associate, although even that 
is not quite exact) it had been arranged, any¬ 
way, between them, that even when alone, they 
would retain the official formulas, for fear of 
an unexpected arrival or an indiscreet ear. In 
such a situation, one cannot take too many 
precautions, can one? 

He looked at his Sovereign, but did not say 
anything. You know that he is not talkative. 
He simply said, as he put down the portforlio 
that he held under his arm and as if he had 
noticed nothing: 

“I myself have two interesting communica¬ 
tions for Your Majesty.” 

Michalis remained silent, so he continued: 

“First, Sire, the “Charge d’ affaires” of Rou- 
mania has just notified me that his government 
is ready to sign the treaty of commerce that we 
proposed to him. It is an excellent thing for 
the country.” 


150 


THE PRINCESS 


“Let us leave all that.” 

Dobrowski bowed. 

“Then, something more urgent, I have just 
learned through my special police-Torce, that 
the Bolsheviks, whose meeting I had the im¬ 
prudence of authorizing this evening, have the 
intention of making a display in the street. I 
fear even that they may push their auadacity 
to the point of attacking the Palace. I was 
just making preparations, when Your Majesty 
called me, to telephone the Chief of Police and 
to the Colonel, commanding the regiment of 
the Cossacks of the guard. And, if Your Ma¬ 
jesty will permit me. . 

He was already holding out his hand toward 
the telephone placed on the desk, when the 
King stopped him suddenly, brutally; 

“No, they will not dare! And then, what 
does it matter to me? Let this incapable and 
ridiculous world fall after we do. I could wish 
for nothing better.” 

This time Dobrowski was struck by the pain¬ 
ful intonation of Michalis’ voice and as the 
latter happened just now to be standing in the 
full light, he noticed that his drawn face re¬ 
flected acute suffering. Deeply touched, his 


AND THE CLOWNS 151 


old and brotherly affection took the upper 
hand, and he seized with a spontaneous gesture 
the icy hand of his friend and cried out, for¬ 
getting all etiquette: 

“Mon Vieux, what is the matter with you. 
Are you suffering?” 

Michalis looked at him for a long time.. 

“The matter with me is that all is over, 
Partner. Do you understand? All is over.” 

“How is that?” 

“She knows.” 

“Who could have. 

“I did.” 

The Minister shook his head. 

“I always suspected that you would end by 
doing that stupidity.” 

“I had no right to deceive her any longer.” 

“That’s just your opinion. And then?. . .” 

“She hurled her disdain and indignation at 
my head.” 

“I am not at all surprised.” 

“It was not I that she loved, it was the 
royal puppet, this uniform that I am wearing, 
this power with which she is intoxicated.” 

“Deplorable education! Now, what are we 
going to do?” 


152 


THE PRINCESS 


“We are leaving. She sent me away.” 

“It’s a pity, everything was going so well. I 
was beginning to get accustomed to luxury. . . 
Well, it cannot be helped! And when do we 
leave?” 

“At once.” 

“Good.” 

“The first train leaves Tcharkowla. . .” 

“At half past three in the morning.” 

“It is one o’clock, we therefore have time 
to arrange everything. Sit down there, and 
prepare two orders of a secret nature under 
no matter what names. Sign also two diplo¬ 
matic passports. I will return at once.” 

The King, (don’t forget that he still was 
one) the King went toward his apartments. 
Partner ran to him, placed his two hands on 
the shoulders of his friend, and looking fixedly 
into his eyes asked: 

“Are you suffering?” 

“Frightfully. But I shall be strong. Fear 
nothing. Do as I told you. I shall see you 
presently.” 

He went out, and Dobrowski-Partner began 
to make out the orders, which shortly would 


AND THE CLOWNS 153 


permit the two fugitives to reach the frontier 
before the scandal burst forth. 


In the other wing of the Palace, the Prin¬ 
cess, crushed by emotion, had fallen asleep on 
the carpet in her room. 

In the northern part, in the part that over¬ 
looks the cypress and sycamore wood, Pierre 
Ducastel, alias Michel Provinkoff, leaning on 
a balustrade of his partly open window, was 
dreaming of his simple happiness as he breathed 
in the night air. 


At the end of about half an hour, Michalis 
(now I shall always call him this) returned 
to the royal study, and Partner, on seeing him, 
could not hold back an exclamation of surprise. 
The pseudo-king, completely shaved, had re¬ 
covered his former face; a striking pallor had 
brought out the violet shade of his eyes which 
seemed to be once more deeply set in their 
orbits. This strong man who tyrannically com¬ 
manded his brain, was not the master of his 
heart, and the latter, affected by the feelings 


154 


THE PRINCESS 


of his soul, was compressed and only put into 
circulation the blood absolutely necessary for 
life. 

To everyone, save his companion in misery, 
our man had become perfectly unrecognizable. 
He had put on a dark traveling-suit, a large 
hat cast over his features a useful shadow. He 
held in one hand a heavy valise, and in the 
other, a violin case of leather which he placed 
on a chair. He himself went to bolt all the 
different doors, so that no one could enter 
unexpectedly, consulted his watch, threw him¬ 
self into an armchair, lit a cigarette and said: 

“We shall leave by the big office door. No 
one will see us, and the second officer of the 
guards will take us, on seeing the service 
papers, for two police agents. You have but 
to disguise your face. On that score I am not 
worried: that is your forte. At present, let us 
talk of the future.” 

“Worth while, in truth.” 

“We shall be at Bucharest some time to¬ 
morrow. There we can take the Orient-Ex¬ 
press.” 

“Where do you expect to go?” 


AND THE CLOWNS 155 


“To England, and without doubt to Amer¬ 
ica afterwards.” 

“Perfect, and how shall we live?” 

“How shall we live?” 

“Yes, for I suppose that you are not carry¬ 
ing off the treasures of Georgevia? Therefore, 
what shall we do?” 

“But, my poor friend, the only thing of 
which we are capable, outside of governing a 
country. We shall take up our old business.” 

“Bravo I On the whole, adventure does not 
displease me, and I have often been homesick 
for the circus. I shall go up and pack my bag.” 

“Don’t be too long.” 

“In ten minutes I shall be at your service.” 

The good Partner opened the door leading 
into the waiting room of the officer in charge, 
bowed deeply, and said in a loud voice: 

“Your Majesty shall have the documents you 
desire in an instant.” 


When he returned, Michalis was seated be¬ 
hind his desk and was contemplating a photo¬ 
graph of Olga Alexandrowna, across which she 
had traced these words in her large aristocratic 


156 


THE PRINCESS 


handwriting: “To Michel, with all my soul.” 
He seemed to wish to burn into his memory that 
dear image, but his fixed eyes were not veiled 
by a single tear. He placed the portrait on his 
desk, went to take a few flowers from a vase 
and set them down in front of the frame. 

“You are not taking this photograph with 
you?” asked Partner. 

“It was not given to me. The Princess 
wrote: “To Michel” and not “To Michalis.” 

He burst suddenly into a nervous abrupt 
laugh. 

“Michalis! A soul in the body of a fool, is 
it possible? a heart under this black costume, 
who would have thought it ?... However, I 
have been a King. . .1 am a King. . .1 am still 
the master. Ha ! Ha 1. . . What will they look 
like tomorrow, these imbecile aristocrats, all 
those besotted officers, all those bloated towns¬ 
men, on learning that they have bent their too 
supple spines in front of two clowns!... Let 
us taste of this irony, Partner, and let us 
laugh!.. .Hold, before leaving, before going 
to die far away in some kind of a hospital, I 
want to offer myself a joy. I want to become 
myself again, here, where men have never 


AND THE CLOWNS 157 


penetrated except with respect and fear. The 
King. . .Your.King, His Majesty, the supreme 
head of the army, of the navy, of the magis¬ 
tracy, of the police, the Grand-Master of the 
orders that you received from his hands, weep¬ 
ing for joy, grotesque puppets, your King, here 
he is!” 

As he spoke, he had pulled his clown costume 
out of his valise, and slipped it over his travel¬ 
ing-suit. He began hooking around his neck 
the ruffled collar of black muslin. 

Partner was weeping. 

Michalis announced in a loud voice; 

“His Majesty, the King!” 

Then he jumped over the sofa. 

“I have a good mind to go thus and review 
my Cossacks, summoned at my call. What do 
you say?” 

“Keep quiet, I beg of you,” murmured Part¬ 
ner. 

The clown stopped suddenly; he looked at 
his companion, and, as if sobered, said between 
his teeth: 

“Yes, it’s sad.” 

He opened the little case that was placed on 
the chair, and drew from it his violin. 


158 THE PRINCESS 

“I am going, for the last time, to play for 
my love.” 

He turned the photograph of Olga, and 
standing in front of her, after having bowed 
to her gravely, he began to improvise. 

The bow glided over the strings, first hesi¬ 
tatingly, then desperately. A song of despair 
arose, a hurried flight of harmonious sobs, cut 
by languor, dull wails and lamentations, which 
were followed by violent insults, cries of anger, 
in fact everything with which the most tragic 
suffering could inspire a baffled soul. 

Partner, with his head in his hands, listened, 
transported by the grandeur of this symphony 
of tears, which rang forth to be lost for ever, 
fugitive beauty scattered into space, similar 
to those prodigious sunsets that no painter has 
the time to note. 

Suddenly he got up and listened to an un¬ 
usual noise coming from outside, first a con¬ 
fused murmur which, by degrees, became loud¬ 
er, approached and broke forth suddenly with 
the full force of a tempest spreading over the 
town. He ran to the window, opened it, leaned 
out, then abruptly closed it again, and drew in 


AND THE CLOWNS 159 


front of it heavy curtains, so as to obscure the 
light from the room. 

There, on the square, a wild horde of mar¬ 
iners, porters, stevedores, sailors’ daughters 
and vagrants who had joined some workmen 
and students, whose caps and berrets could be 
distinguished by the light of the torches, were 
rushing toward the Palace shouting death cries. 

Even before Partner could speak, the Rev¬ 
olutionists had smashed down the gateway, and 
were attacking the doors on the left wing, de¬ 
ceived undoubtedly by the light coming from 
the apartments of the Princess. 

Michalis, lost in his dream, was still playing. 
His comrade shook him brutally: 

“Let us fly! Here is the riot. It will help 
us, anyway.” 

Terrified people were knocking at the door 
of the royal study; Partner opened it slightly 
and cried out: 

“His Majesty is in safety. All resistance is 
impossible now. Escape, all of you, through 
the garden.” 

He closed the door. 

“Now, not a minute to lose. Let us make for 
the offices. Come, take off this costume. . . 


160 


THE PRINCESS 


What are you doing?. . .They will see you!” 

Michalis, at the window, was looking at the 
Bolsheviks; a nervous laugh twisted his 
mouth; he was muttering: 

“Advance!. . . Burn everything!. . . Ransack 
everything!. . .One man alone could save you, 
old sickly society, you repulse him. Die then! 
When there are no more strong individualities, 
speech belongs to the masses.” 

But, all of a sudden, his eyes filled with ter¬ 
ror. The human tide rushed onward, howling, 
into the Palace. 

“The Princess!.. .They are going to kill 
her!. . . Ah! no, not that!. . . Not that!. . . I 
am a miserable wretch!. . . Olga. . . Dearest 
Olga, here I am...” 

In spite of Partner, who clung to him crying: 
“You are mad!”, he was already dashing to¬ 
ward the door, when fists began desperately 
knocking against it, and a woman’s voice, chok¬ 
ing with fear, implored: 

“Open the door!. . . Save me!...” 

Michalis freed himself violently and opened 
it. 

The Princess entered, distracted with terror: 

“Help!...Help!...” 


AND THE CLOWNS 161 


Instinctively she had run there toward the 
one she looked upon as master, and the clown 
had a feeling of deep pride. Behind her, a 
man had rushed into the study, pale with fear, 
saying: 

“Here they are!” 

It was Pierre Ducastel. 

Michalis, on seeing him began to laugh. The 
two fugitives remained dumbfounded before 
the transformation of the King into a clown. 
But they could already hear the rioters rushing 
into the waiting-rooms shouting, “Death.” A 
voice was heard, that of the leader undoubted¬ 
ly, commanding: “This way!...They ran in 
this direction. Come quickly.” 

The black clown had opened the door lead¬ 
ing to the offices. 

“Go in there,” he ordered. “Lead them in, 
Partner. The alarm must be given; telephone 
in any case to the Cossacks. I shall hold back 
these wretches.” 

“They will kill you,” cried Olga, “save your¬ 
self.” 

Michalis did not reply and contented him¬ 
self with pushing her outside with Ducastel. 
As Partner placed himself by his side saying, 


162 


THE PRINCESS 


“I shall not leave you!” he crushed him with 
such a severe glance that he gave way. 

“Do as I order!” 

At that moment he had become King once 
more! 

The Bolsheviks ran in hastily, already a 
little confused by their ignorance of the places 
where they expected to begin their work. They 
were not very numerous. Thirty agitators, de¬ 
termined to attempt everything, were dragging 
in their wake two hundred villains who had 
come there to pillage, but who were also ready 
to turn back at the first sight of real danger. 
The leaders, sent from Moscow, and the heads 
of the Georgevian party, counted on this bold 
attack in order to start a far reaching move¬ 
ment. Their aim was as follows: to seize the 
King, the Princess, the Prime Minister and 
several other high officials. Then once masters 
of these important hostages, they planned to 
establish themselves in the Palace, issue a proc¬ 
lamation, and await the uprising of the coun¬ 
try, and, above all, the arrival of the relief 
forces that the Russian Soviets would not fail 
to send them, to sustain an uprising that would 


AND THE CLOWNS 163 


appear to be a popular one in the eyes of for¬ 
eign countries. 

It was evidently an audacious plan conceived 
one evening in the Oriental mirage which, how¬ 
ever, could succeed only if carried out rapidly 
and by surprise. But for the present, the 
rioters had only managed to get hold of one 
officer and an unfortunate secretary, personages 
of no importance. They had expected to find 
everyone in bed and asleep, but there, before 
them, a gown had fled through the dark pas¬ 
sages and they hastened in pursuit of it with 
rage, feeling already that the coveted prey 
was in the act of escaping. 

A few had even turned back, others had 
lost themselves in that vast unknown Palace; 
certain ones finally lingered behind to force 
open desks, steal knick-knacks, and slash at the 
tapestries. 

Only a hundred of them arrived at the 
royal study, into which they rushed howling, 
after having broken down the door. 

The sight that met their eyes nailed them 
to the threshold with surprise. 

In this large room which was illumined by 
only one shaded ceiling light, they saw, instead 


164 


THE PRINCESS 


of the terrorized people that they expected to 
find, a strange clown dressed in black satin, 
who, perched on a corner of the desk, was 
quietly playing the violin as he looked up at 
them with fixed inexpressive eyes. 

The first man came to a halt. Among those 
who followed, some, the more timorous, fear¬ 
ing an armed defence, fled; the boldest, not 
understanding what was going on, elbowed 
their way in. The unexpected sight stopped 
their death cries. For several seconds, they all 
remained motionless, facinated by this impas¬ 
sive man, who, turning his face from left to 
right and right to left, cast over them the 
sombre fire of his glassy stare. 

One of the leaders, finally overcoming the 
discomfort that was seizing him, cried out: 

“Comrades, you have before you the proof 
of the indifference of the potentates who govern 
us. While you grieve, while people suffer and 
die in misery, they think of nothing but feasts 
and pleasures. Concerts, balls and theatres do 
not suffice them. To fill their idle hours, now 
they send for mountebanks. While we believe 
them to be occupied in resolving great social 
problems, they amuse themselves by watching 


AND THE CLOWNS 165 


the grimaces of fools. The hour of chastise¬ 
ment has struck for them.” 

He took a step forward and addressed the 
black clown. 

“Come, you, tell us quickly where the King 
is.” 

Michalis, without answering, looked straight 
at him with his sombre eyes, which suddenly 
seemed to sparkle. 

“Will you answer? I ask you where the 
King is?” 

As if coming out of a dream, Michalis 
stopped playing and said: 

“The King? You are asking for the King?” 

“Yes, which way did he go?” 

“He did not go anywhere, I am the King!” 

A tremendous burst of laughter shook all the 
Bolsheviks. But he who had spoken first be¬ 
came furious. 

“Enough joking, imbecile, answer us, or, if 
you don’t, look out for the consequences.” 

The clown, without taking his eyes off him, 
slipped off the table, placed his violin behind 
him, and, advancing toward the speaker said to 
him in a thundering voice: 


166 


THE PRINCESS 


“The King?...And why should you think 
that I am not he, imbecile?” 

The man drew back, Michalis turned on his 
heel, sprang on the table, and, still impassive, 
cried out addressing them all: 

“I ask you, citizens, are there not enough 
Kings in the world who make clowns of them¬ 
selves, for a clown to make a King of himself 
just once?” 

“Well spoken,” said a student, laughing. 

A workman interrupted: 

“Let us not stay here amusing ourselves. 
Forward!” 

But now Michalis was wagging his wan head 
like a serpent fascinating his prey, and no one 
made a step. 

The clown continued: 

“Is it not to-day in all the spheres of human 
activity, that the fools govern?. . .What dif¬ 
ference is there, in your opinion, between clowns 
and kings? Have they not both the same func¬ 
tion that of putting the people to sleep with 
stories and shows, of checking their boredom 
by buffoonery some accomplish by laughter and 
others by gravity? Clowns sometimes throw 
balloons into the crowd, and one sees not only 


AND THE CLOWNS 167 


children, but also women, men, and even old 
people jostling each other to make them bounce, 
and to play with them joyously. The leaders 
of the people also throw into the crowd, to 
attract their attention, ideas which are like the 
balloons of the circus, goldbeaters’ skin puffed 
out with air. When a clown asks the audience, 
pointing to “Auguste” who has just played a 
trick on him; “Shall I give him a kick in the 
rear?” everyone cries out, applauding heartily: 
“Yes, yes, and a good hard one.” When a 
King asks his subjects, pointing to a neighbor¬ 
ing people: “Shall we thrash them?” They 
reply in the same manner, throwing their hats 
in the air: “Yes, yes, and very hard.” Only, 
in this case, there is quite a marked difference 
between the two men, to which no one pays 
any attention: the clown goes himself to give 
the promised kick, for which he may get a good 
drubbing; the King, however, sends others to 
settle his quarrels. 

“Fool’s play, either farcical or bloody. The 
clown is King, the clown is King on this earth. 
A clown is this once revolutionist minister, 
who kisses with emotion the same flag with 
which he formerly wished to adorn the refuse- 


168 


THE PRINCESS 


heap! A clown, this deputy, making promises 
to his electors that he knows he cannot keep. 
A clown, this diplomat laden with decorations 
and gold braid, gravely discussing questions of 
which he does not understand the first word, 
and who, puffed out with importance, regulates 
the destiny of nations! A clown, this lawyer, 
who sheds tears while defending the worst 
rake! A clown, this magistrate, who acquits 
the profiteers and condemns all the unfortunate 
wretches! 

“The clown is King, I tell you, the clown is 
King.” 

All eyes were riveted on Michalis, who 
looked at this minute like a lion tamer, holding 
his beasts in abeyance. Without giving his 
audience time to reflect he continued: 

“And you, my friends, are you not also 
clowns without knowing it, who the ring¬ 
leaders push into the arena to make you per¬ 
form dangerous tricks, of which all the success 
will come back to them. . .What are you doing 
here? What result can you draw from this 
frolic? Don’t you perceive that, at this mo¬ 
ment, you are bounding and rebounding those 
goldbeaters’ skin balloons of empty phrases and 


AND THE CLOWNS 169 


utopias. But, take care, they contain pernicious 
gases from which one dies when they burst. 
Get along with you!. . . Violence never engen¬ 
ders anything but violence. Do not try to 
impose the reign of your minority on this peace¬ 
ful country. Enjoy life. You, fishermen, return 
to your boats which are rocking in the harbor. 
In a few hours, the adorable day-break will 
appear on the horizon. Let the town awake 
singing, do not fill it with silence and fright.” 

He had taken up his violin, and still keeping 
his eyes on the Revolutionists, he commenced to 
play. 

“Listen to the song of the town; the women 
are chattering as they sweep the threshold of 
their houses, the sailors are turning the creak¬ 
ing capstans, the merchants are calling out 
through the streets, the bells of the churches 
are loudly pealing forth, the sun is already 
making the sands shimmer. This evening, the 
lads and lassies will dance on the squares. Life 
is good! And you, peasants, what are you 
doing here when the birds will soon begin their 
concerts in the branches? Go and open the gates 
of the folds so that your sheep may wander 
about bleating over the steppes. As you lie 


170 


THE PRINCESS 


flat on the grass watching over them you will 
look at the golden scarab rolling its ball among 
the stones. Then, after refreshing yourself 
with pure water from the spring, you will sleep 
under the ancient olive trees, lulled by the far¬ 
away song of the women washing the linen in 
the river. Life is good!” 

As he spoke, he played, turn by turn, blend¬ 
ing them in cleverly one with the other, all the 
most beautiful songs of Georgevia. A few 
of the Revolutionists walked slowly out of the 
room, as if compelled to do so by the look in 
his eyes; others lowered their heads, two or 
three even wept, several, at last, recaptured by 
their daily habits, chanted under their breath 
the three notes which to every oriental is the 
lullaby of his innermost dream. 

Suddenly, a great tumult sounded on the 
square and in the courtyard of the Palace; the 
gallop of horses, nervous commands and a 
clanking of arms: 

“The dream is over!. . .Fly!. . cried 
Michalis, jumping from the table. “Fly quick¬ 
ly, or you will be seized. Every man for him¬ 
self, my friends, every man for himself!” 

It was a sudden, bewildered disbanding, all 


AND THE CLOWNS 171 


the more rapid because of Partner who had 
just come in crying: “The Cossacks! Here 
are the Cossacks!” less to frighten the rioters 
than to warn his companion, who slipped quick¬ 
ly into the royal apartments. 

Chased through the hallways, the drawing¬ 
rooms and the park, jumping out of the win¬ 
dows, but surrounded on all sides, the Revolu¬ 
tionists were nearly all arrested. A few only, 
succeeded in escaping and hurried rapidly be¬ 
yond the frontier in the fear of reprisals which 
they thought would be terrible. 

Partner, aided by the Chief of Police and the 
Colonel of the Cossacks, having taken all wise 
precautions, calm was soon restored in the 
Palace, which was surrounded for additional 
safety by a relay of troops. 

It was exactly in this manner that this skirm¬ 
ish took place on the 15th of April, 1921. The 
report of it was hushed up carefully, and the 
newspapers of Tcharkowla, under compulsion, 
reduced it to a news item of ten lines. 


When everyone had gone, Michalis, who had 
been notified and had changed his clown cos- 


172 


THE PRINCESS 


tume, came himself to open the door of the 
offices, behind which crouched the Princess Ol¬ 
ga, trembling. 

“Madame,” he said to her, as he bowed re- 
specfully,” you can return to your apartments. 
All danger is over. I apologize for not having, 
as yet, carried out your orders. As you may 
judge by looking at the present condition of 
my face, I was preparing to do so when the 
riot broke out. It is no longer possible for me 
to disappear just now, and I see myself forced 
to await tomorrow night before putting my plan 
into execution. Are you willing to grant me 
this delay? I shall profit by the happenings of 
to-day to take different useful measures for the 
good of the country, and I shall issue a procla¬ 
mation announcing my decision of retiring into 
a monastery, and I shall sign a total abdication 
in your favor. I believe it would be preferable 
for Georgevia, and for yourself, Madame, not 
to reveal my identity. You will, however, be 
free to act according to your conscience. Nat¬ 
urally, no one will see me during these eighteen 
hours.” 

The poor little Princess was touched to the 
point of not being able to speak. She managed, 


AND THE CLOWNS 173 


however, to master herself by a supreme effort 
of will-power. 

“I thank you, sir,” she murmured in a choked 
voice,” I thank you for the composure and 
courage that you have just shown. You have 
saved my life, I shall never forget it.” 

Michalis bent one knee to the ground. 

“I have but done my duty, Madame. But 
since Your Highness is willing to express appro¬ 
bation, I take the liberty, on account of the serv¬ 
ice that I have had the happiness of rendering 
you, to solicit your pardon before my definite 
departure.” 

A flood of tears filled the eyes of Olga Alex- 
androwna. She held out a trembling hand to 
the clown, which he kissed devoutly, and said 
in a low voice, “I forgive you,” and fled. 

On the way she met her mother, the Grand 
Duchess Marie, who was just returning, quiver¬ 
ing with a retrospective fear, agitated but tri¬ 
umphant also, for the event of the night justi¬ 
fied her predictions. 

“Ah dearest, my own darling,” she cried, 
clinging to Olga, who was running, her hand¬ 
kerchief to her mouth to stifle her sobs; “my 
little girl. . .what an abomination!. . .When I 


174 


THE PRINCESS 


think of it I... the bandits... to have dared! 
. . . It’s terrible!. . . How frightened you must 
have been, you poor sweet child. . .If only I 
had been there. . . But I could not have been of 
any use to you ... I should have died first. . . 
You will tell me about it, of course. For good¬ 
ness sake, don’t walk so quickly, my legs are 
aching horribly. Didn’t I forsee this? But, 
no one would listen to me, and I am sure that 
your Michel thought I was crazy. . .He sees 
at last where his theories and methods are 
leading us all! What does he say now? I 
hope he is going to hang all those miserable 
wretches, those assassins, those. . .” 

But the Princess, without listening to her, 
had gone into her room, and had very disre¬ 
spectfully shut the door in her face, which at 
first choked her with astonishment and indig¬ 
nation. She cried out, knocked, stormed, wept, 
nothing availed. Tiring of striving, and as 
no one in this suddenly deserted Palace rushed 
to hear her complaints, recriminations and 
prophecies, she retired haughtily to her apart¬ 
ments, for the very good reason that she was 
dropping with sleep. 


AND THE CLOWNS 175 


If anyone had been taken by surprise by what 
he had just seen and heard, it was the musician, 
Pierre Ducastel, who had entered the royal 
study behind the Princess and to whom nobody 
had paid any attention. 

As soon as Olga Alexandrowna had gone, he 
rushed toward Michalis: 

“What is the meaning of this shaven face? 
What do these words that you have just said 
imply. Departure, abdication? Can you, by 
any chance have revealed the truth to your 
fiancee! Can you have committed this impru¬ 
dence, this folly?” 

The pseudo-king lowered his head. 

“But, you had not the right. ..” 

“Oh! Reassure yourself, sir, I did not be¬ 
tray your secret.” 

“Bah! What does that matter to me! Be¬ 
sides I am not speaking of myself now, but 
solely of you. No, you had not the right, I 
must tell you! When one has, like yourself, 
undertaken a formidable work, one does not 
risk compromising matters by an imprudence; 
when one is a leader one does not worry over 
insignificant scruples; when one has chosen au- 


176 


THE PRINCESS 


dacity for life’s rule one does not weaken all 
of a sudden. . .Naturally the Princess did not 
understand. She saw nothing but herself, her 
pride, her race, her prejudices. Did she send 
you away? And are you going to obey her, 
are you going to abandon this country which 
owes its prosperity to you, these people that 
place their confidence in you? Well, permit 
me to tell you that it is a desertion unworthy of 
you!... It is. . . ” 

Michalis drew himself up. 

“Enough, sir! I act according to my con¬ 
science, and I have the habit of accepting ad¬ 
vice only when solicited by myself.” 

“Bravo, Sire, there are words of a King. 
But, whether you wish it or not, Your Majesty 
will remain on the throne of Georgevia. I 
make that my business.” 

And, backing out, bowing three times, he 
went out of the royal study. 


What a day! It is very certain that it will 
never be mentioned in the history of Georgevia, 
and that it will never appear on the calendar 


AND THE CLOWNS 177 


like the day of the “Dupes.” However, it is 
well worth being related, for I am pretty sure 
that one would find such a day with difficulty in 
the life of any existing people. I have tried 
my best to relate it as simply as possible, so 
as to preserve in my narrative that tone of 
truth so necessary when one has, like myself, 
the perilous happiness of handling a true story, 
naturally much more romantic than those so- 
called works of imagination. 

Rest assured that I could easily draw from 
its events that which might make it distinctive, 
by very fine philosophic reflections, whose stu¬ 
pidity I would drown in a flood of stilted 
words. That would perhaps win me a literary 
prize and the consideration of my trades 
people. But, as, at the same time, I would 
run the risk of boring you intensely, I do not 
hesitate to sacrifice my reputation for your 
pleasure. 

Besides, my recital is not finished; I have 
still time to change my mind. One never 
knows, perhaps I may be seized in the next 
few days by overpowering ambition. We shall 
see. 

In any case, to come back to my story, the 


178 


THE PRINCESS 


day of the 16th of April, 1921, was, in a meas¬ 
ure, as curious as that of the 15th, with less 
action, but just as interesting. 

You will find the details in the following 
chapter. 


CHAPTER IX 

When the sun, as is its custom, cast once 
again its golden rays over the Palace of 
Tcharkowla, it beheld the chief inhabitants, 
still pale from their emotions, deep in varied 
meditations, or moved by contradictory feel¬ 
ings. 

Princess Olga, near her window, her eyes 
fixed on the triumphal arches that were being 
erected on the square, was thinking of this 
tragic night when she had seen all the officers, 
bailiffs and guards, crazed with fear, fleeing 
before the rioters, and when she herself, terror- 
stricken, had run down the dark passages to¬ 
ward the refuge, and what a refuge!. . . One 
man alone had not lost his “sang-froid”, one 
alone had dared to confront the furious mob, 
and, by his moral ascendency, his intelligence, 
and the mysterious strength that was latent in 
179 


180 


THE PRINCESS 


him, had suceeded in nailing it to the spot, thus 
saving the country from the worst of disturb¬ 
ances. And this man was the very one that she 
had, a few minutes previously, dismissed like 
a guilty valet. 

Michalis, in the royal apartments, had be¬ 
gun to compose the famous proclamation by 
which, tomorrow, the Georgevian people would 
learn of the departure of their sovereign, but 
his pen soon slipped from his hand. He saw, 
once again, the Princess running to him crying 
out, “Save me!...Save me!”...With him 
away, who would protect her weakness? To¬ 
ward whom would her instinct, which was 
surer than her mind, direct her?. . .Ah! how 
much wiser it would have been, instead of at¬ 
tempting this impossible dream of becoming her 
husband, to have slipped in near her as secre¬ 
tary or even servant. He could at least have 
been able to follow her for ever, watch over her 
and defend her. Yes, but he would have 
wished to restore to her the position that she 
previously held, to enable her to ascend this 
throne to which she was formerly destined. 
He had succeeded in this fantastic undertaking, 
and now, through his own fault, everything 


AND THE CLOWNS 181 


was crumbling around him. He had believed 
himself to be sufficiently strong, he had had 
confidence in love, and love had betrayed him 
. .. Still, Olga’s hand had trembled just now on 
approaching his lips in that gesture of pardon 
. . .He was leaving and would never see her 
again, never again would she lean her blonde 
head against his chest, never again would he 
breathe in the intoxicating perfume of youth 
through her half open lips. 

The poor King’s head reeled, he rested his 
burning brow on the table, and remained there 
without weeping, but weak from grief. 

In his office, the Prime Minister, between 
interviews with functionaries who had come 
to affirm their loyalty, was looking at him¬ 
self in the mirror and wrinkling up his 
mobile face in search of the expressions of the 
clown Partner. 

As for the Grand Duchess Marie Nicol- 
aevna, who, according to her custom was 
thinking of nothing, or which is about the 
same, of a thousand things at once, she was 
passing off her bad temper and her nervousness 
on the people near her, bestowing on them with 


182 THE PRINCESS 

liberality the names of all the animals in crea¬ 
tion. 

Her exasperation, we must admit, had a 
just cause. . . Just think, since her awakening 
she had attempted to see her daughter but a 
maid, whose trouble had been repaid by a 
magisterial blow, had placed herself before 
the Princess’ door declaring that she had been 
given definite orders that no one, not ever her 
mother, no, not even her mother, should enter 
her room. A request for an interview carried 
to the King, received the answer that His 
Majesty, absorbed in State affairs, could not 
receive anyone all day. Dobrowski, whom the 
Grand Duchess had also begged to go up and 
see her, had, in his turn, excused himself under 
the pretext of his thousand duties at this very 
difficult time. 

After having called as witness to her mis¬ 
fortune, the impassive portrait of the Ataman, 
relegated to the infernal gods the Bolsheviks, 
Dobrowski, the General Kameniski, the Coun¬ 
tess Orchapoff and all her civil and military 
household, proclaimed her daughter an ingrate 
and the King a stupid crank, Marie Nicolaevna 
had given orders that her horses be put to her 


AND THE CLOWNS 183 


carriage and her squadron of Cossacks mobil¬ 
ized, and now she was preparing herself to 
offer up to God, who had nothing to do with 
it, her grief, her bitterness, her anguish, and 
her unassuaged curiosity. 

Having contemplated this spectacle, the sun 
continued to rise and began to caress the flow¬ 
ered terraces of the Palace. 


“Give this envelope to the Princess, and do 
not concern yourself about the consequences.” 

“But, sir, I repeat to you, Her Highness is 
suffering and can see no one.” 

“And I repeat to you that after having read 
the contents of this letter, Her Highness will 
be the first to desire to see me. Go, I take it 
upon myself. It consists of a matter of grave 
importance concerning His Majesty the King.” 

The lady-in-waiting who had been called by 
Olga’s maid, at the urgent insistence of Pierre 
Ducastel, hesitated a few seconds, then, finally 
as he repeated, “It concerns the interest of the 
King and the kingdom,” took it upon herself 
to go in to her august mistress, who received 
her very coldly. 


184 


THE PRINCESS 


“Since when can people ignore my orders?” 

“I beg Your Highness to excuse me. There 
is a man outside who says that he is certain 
of being received by you, Madame, as soon as 
you have read this letter. I thought it my 
duty.. .” 

“You were wrong! Leave me!” 

“Your Highness must permit me to insist. 
The man asserts that it consists of a very grave 
matter, pertaining to the life of His Majesty 
the King.” 

The lady-in-waiting had deemed it useful, 
having seen the determination depicted on Ol¬ 
ga’s face, to add a word to the communication 
that she was asked to convey to her, one 
single word, one simple little word which serves 
to imply such a great thing; “the life”. . . 

She was a woman whose heart had spoken, 
even chattered, affirmed people of evil tongues. 
The effect that she counted on producing with 
the supplemented word did not fail to be pro¬ 
duced. The Princess snatched the letter from 
her hands and read feverishly. When she had 
scanned the few lines it contained she became 
pale, rubbed her eyes, re-read it a second time 
more slowly, then looked at her lady-in-waiting 


AND THE CLOWNS 139 


with such an expression of fright, that the 
latter drew near, thinking that she was sud¬ 
denly ill. But Olga pushed her away with an 
almost imperceptible gesture and sat down to 
fight against the fainting-spell that she felt 
coming on, and with her head leaning against 
the back of the armchair, remained for several 
moments immovable, trying by deep breaths 
to bring back calm to her agitated heart. At 
last, for the third time, she took up the sheet 
of paper which was the cause of her emotion. 

“Madame: 

“The reason of the surprising confession 
made to you by His Majesty yesterday evening, 
is my secret presence in this Palace. Be good 
enough to grant me, as discreetly as possible, an 
interview such as the King would have wished 
it to be. 

“I am Your Highness’s very humble and very 
obedient servant. 

“MICHEL PROVINKOFF, 

“ex Grand Duke of Georgevia, 
“alias Pierre Ducastel.” 

I shall not attempt to describe to you again 
the surprise, the anxiety, the stupefaction of 


186 


THE PRINCESS 


Olga Alexandrowna, after having read and re¬ 
read these words. No, you can picture this 
to yourself very well, and I should but repeat 
myself odiously. 

In truth, in a story like this, where the most 
unforeseen events succeed each other, the ob¬ 
stacle for the author in charge of the recital 
lies just in that very similarity of the feelings 
experienced by his heroes. As the expressions 
and gestures of men are not numerous, the au¬ 
thor risks, if he is not careful, spending his 
time showing people with their arms extended 
to Heaven, taking their heads in their hands, 
getting pale, blushing, choking, shaking, trem¬ 
bling, getting faint, walking nervously, speak¬ 
ing in a weak or strained voice, tearing open 
their collars, restraining the beating of their 
hearts, etc. . .,etc. . .,Having already rather 
overdone these descriptions, I have decided now 
to spare you this, and to leave to you the task 
of placing yourselves in the mental state of my 
characters. 

Olga wondered, as you would have done, if 
the author of the letter were not an imposter, 
but she rejected the idea instantly, for in that 
case, how would he have learned the “surpris- 


AND THE CLOWNS 187 


ing confession of the King”? She therefore 
gave the order to her lady-in-waiting to show 
in this visitor. 

Ducastel appeared, took off his glasses and 
bowed: 

“Do you recognize me, Madam?” he asked. 

She made a negative sign. 

He smiled then: 

“That’s good.” 

As she drew back a little he continued: 

“Do not fear anything. You are not dealing 
with an adventurer or a madman. I shall have 
the honor of furnishing Your Highness with 
all the necessary explanations. . . But first, will 
you allow me to take a useful precaution?” 

He took from a table the letter he had sent 
the young girl, tore it into bits and put them 
into his trousers pocket. 

This being done, he gave free rein to his 
memories, evoking for the Princess, with gay 
regardlessness, their pre-war meetings, the 
visit she had made him, accompanied by her 
parents at the beginning of the summer in 
1914, their conversations, and all this with 
such exactness, with so many details that she 
very quickly ceased to doubt his identity. Be- 


188 


THE PRINCESS 


sides, as he spoke, she recognized the intona¬ 
tions of his voice, the puckering of his brow, 
and his gestures. She had truly before her the 
real Grand Duke Michel, her former fiance, 
but how changed!. . . She could hardly believe 
her eyes!. . . Greater than the astonishment of 
this unexpected return (she began to be hard¬ 
ened to this kind of thing) was this unprece¬ 
dented transformation which rendered her 
speechless. She searched for the elegant Prince 
of former times in this big, corpulent man; she 
tried to find in this round reddish face the grave 
and melancholy physiognomy of the Michel 
III that she had known. 

Ducastel, guessing her thoughts, began to 
laugh. 

“Is it not true, Madam, that the “other one” 
is infinitely more myself than I am? But let 
us not lose our time. How does it happen that 
I am alive? I will tell you later. Why am I 
here near you? To prevent you from com¬ 
mitting an injustice and causing your own un¬ 
happiness. I have the greatest sympathy for 
you, and for this Michalis, I have unlimited 
admiration. You are made for each other, you 
love each other. Do not protest; I know it. 


AND THE CLOWNS 189 


Why are you withdrawing from the only man 
capable of realizing your dreams?.. .Yes, I 
know, because he was born of the people, be¬ 
cause he made himself?. . .Allow me to laugh. 
These prejudices are unworthy of a woman as 
intelligent as you. I came to find you so that 
you might recognize the fact. Look at me; 
think of him. I am an authentic Prince, he is 
but the son of small shop-keepers. Which of 
us shows the higher breeding? My soul is as 
commonplace as my body; I have never loved 
power, I never knew how to command, I never 
loved anything but tranquillity; responsibilities 
have always frightened me; when they weighed 
on my shoulders, I ceased to live; that is why 
my thin face bore an expression of sadness that 
you took for a mark of distinction. Free, 
happy, without cares, I have expanded morally 
and physically. 

“The King, on the contrary, this true King, 
possesses a strong, ardent and imperious soul. 
He is born to command. He is a leader. Na¬ 
ture creates masters from time to time, those 
“supermen” that Nietzsche speake of. Only it 
does not choose the society in which they are to 
be born. It casts them over the world at ran- 


190 


THE PRINCESS 


dom. Then, while a little country boy is being 
born at a royal confinement, an emperor comes 
into the world in a cottage, a God sees the light 
of day in a stable. 

“You, yourself, Princess, have the advantage 
of possessing the good qualities and the failings 
of your sphere, you are a veritable aristocrat 
in the best sense of the word. Pray tell me, 
what happiness could you obtain from a failure 
of a Prince like myself? Michalis alone, this 
man of the people, who, with a glance trans¬ 
fixes a band of rioters, whose vast mind em¬ 
braces all the politics of a country, before whom 
other men bow instinctively, he alone can bring 
you all the moral satisfaction that you are 
wishing for. He is your equal. Consequently, 
give yourself to him. By what right, on ac¬ 
count of obsolete prejudices could you deprive 
the country of its true guide? Did not Marie- 
Louise, the daughter of the Habsbourgs, marry 
the little Corsican captain called Bonaparte? 

“I searched for my own happiness in flight. 
I deserted the throne for which I was not 
made, I fled from you, of whom however, I 
admired the intelligence and beauty, in order 
to found a family with a wife who was simple 


AND THE CLOWNS 191 


and timid, whose happiness consists of running 
her house and raising her children well. I did 
that without any scruples, for you did not love 
me, and you even occasionally found me rather 
ridiculous. Yes, yes. . .do you remember how 
you laughed when I almost fell off my horse 
while reviewing my Cossacks with your father? 
But I was a reigning Grand Duke. I was go¬ 
ing to bestow upon you, through a compulsory 
marriage, the title of Highness. You would 
have had at the Imperial Court, for that rea¬ 
son, an advantage over your friends. You 
were grateful to me. Then, what do you not 
owe the man who in four days will make of you, 
not a Grand Duchess but a Queen?” 

Olga had not answered a word; she had 
only two or three times during this unexpected 
speech made a faint gesture of denial or pro¬ 
testation. She was a prey to a thousand dif¬ 
ferent feelings which were not translated in her 
mind by words. Nevertheless, she listened 
with all her soul, and the fine things that the 
speaker said of Michalis seemed to her but a 
sonorous echo of her own thoughts. 

Briefly, the Grand Duke told her how he had 
escaped from the Revolution, how and why 


192 


THE PRINCESS 


he had allowed himself to be passed off for 
dead and finally, why he had returned to 
Tcharkowla a few days previously. 

She lent but a distracted ear to his explana¬ 
tions interrupted by a good childish laugh which 
irritated her. The abyss that separated her 
from this man seemed deeper and deeper. At 
the same time, the fine elegant silhouette of the 
King forced itself into her memory. He was 
veritably a great lord I Tears clouded her eyes, 
a great, deep tenderness filled her little heart, 
a sweetness submerged her mind, swallowed 
up her will, a great desire came to her to fold 
in her arms and rock against her breast the 
loved one whom she had made suffer; and, 
suddenly, she was but a loving woman. 

Pierre Ducastel seized her hands. He said, 
and the tone of his voice had become grave: 

“And as I, Michel Provinkoff, Grand Duke 
of Georgevia and master of this State by right 
of birth, consider this man worthy to bear my 
name and my titles, as more suitable than my¬ 
self, to fulfill the functions that fate has put 
upon me, as I, from to-day, in your presence, 
abdicate in his favor, you have not the right 
to dismiss him. I shall beg him to keep all the 


AND THE CLOWNS 193 


things that belonged to me and to play my part; 
if needs be, I shall command him to do so. If 
you judge him unworthy of becoming your hus¬ 
band, do not marry him. That is your right. 
But, in the name of the principle of authority 
which is dear to you, in the name of the tra¬ 
ditions of caste that you respect, I ask you 
to come with me to express to him your entire 
approbation of my wishes, for I fear, alas, 
that he may not be willing to listen to me on 
your account. Come, Madam.” 

He drew her gently with him and she fol¬ 
lowed him meekly. 


You surely guess what happened in conse¬ 
quence of all this. At first Michalis categori¬ 
cally refused to obey the advice of Pierre Du- 
castel. He even held to his decision of disap¬ 
pearing, when the Princess Olga, in a trembling 
voice, said to him: “His Highness is right, 
sir, and you should listen to him.” As the 
former Grand Duke was insisting, begging and 
ordering, he cried out: 

“This country has got along without me for 


194 


THE PRINCESS 


many years, it will do without me very easily 
in the future, and its prosperity will not be 
impaired by my departure, I assure you. Any¬ 
way, deprived of the motive that guided my 
actions, and of the one for whose sake I wished 
to be great, I would make but a deplorable 
leader. The spring of my will would be brok¬ 
en; I should soon become an adept of that 
“what’s the use” which, at present, is reducing 
the world to decay. 

He turned toward the young girl: 

“For I must tell you again, Madam, that it 
is neither ambition nor interest that led me to 
act as I have done. It is love alone. I feel 
for men, too much disdain and too much pity 
to have ever hoped to command them. When 
one has, like myself, suffered in adversity from 
their injustice and their cruelty, one experiences 
when in power, nothing but disgust for their 
baseness and their servility. Besides it is per¬ 
haps thus, that one acquires this soul of a lead¬ 
er that “Monsieur” pretends Heaven has 
gifted me with. 

“The man who sees at close range, how 
posts, dignities and honors are obtained, if he 


AND THE CLOWNS 195 


has any pride in his soul, and any honesty in 
his heart, could never desire any of them. As 
for the one who must distribute them, he is 
destined without fail to wallow in the blackest 
melancholy, on facing these ignoble appetites 
and these petty ambitions, if he cannot offer in 
homage to a beloved woman the curved spines 
of his solicitors. Very rare are they in the 
history of the world who find happiness in 
being strong for themselves alone. The great¬ 
er number of the maniacs of power have fallen 
into folly, vice, or mysticism. The echo of the 
Escurials is still repeating their cries as of 
the damned, their martyr wails. A sceptre, 
whatever it may be, always finishes by crushing 
you, if two little white hands do not help you 
to carry it.” 

Thus spoke the clown Michalis, King of 
Georgevia, and the Princess Olga, daughter 
of the Grand Duke Alexander Dimitrievitch, 
cousin of the Czar, replied by letting herself 
fall into his arms, before Michel Provinkoff, 
French musician, very proud of the first act of 
authority that he had ever been capable of, and 
which would be probably the last in his life. 


196 


THE PRINCESS 


If you are astonished at this sudden change 
in our dear Princess, at this spontaneous abdi¬ 
cation of the principles that she had made the 
rule of her life, it is because you do not under¬ 
stand anything about a woman in love. 

Woman, what an admirable being! While 
a man is able to love beneath him and remain 
clear-sighted, she, on the contrary, can only 
give herself up to someone greater than her¬ 
self. Then, when it happens that her heart is 
captivated by a man socially and morally her 
inferior, well, she raises him, that’s all. She 
adorns him with all the qualities that he should 
have, she reforms the injustice of fate, she fills 
with tenderness all the gaps, she lowers her¬ 
self, if needs be, in order not to tower over the 
one she has chosen for a master. Do not be 
surprised then, if, after a first movement of 
revolt, Olga had created for herself a veritable 
King out of this Michalis that she adored. 

From that moment, everything went beauti¬ 
fully. Michel I, triumphant (I restore this 
name to him with pleasure) tore up the procla¬ 
mation that he had commenced to write; Part¬ 
ner, once again Dobrowski, burned the order 
and the two passports prepared the night be- 


AND THE CLOWNS 197 


fore. The rioters who had been arrested, 
were, that very evening, taken to the frontier 
and expelled from Georgevia. The greater part 
of them were foreigners; the others received a 
sum of money sufficient for them to be, without 
material worry, good Revolutionaries. 

Princess Olga went happily to find her 
mother, who was still annoyed, threw herself 
joyously into her arms, and said to her: 

“Little Mother, don’t be angry. I will now 
tell you the reason of my bad temper this 
morning, and explain why the King and I re¬ 
mained shut, up, each in our own rooms. Well, 
this is it. . .1 was sulking. . .,yes, I was sulk¬ 
ing. Michel obstinately refused to obey a wish 
that I had expressed to him, a whim, to be 
more exact. We quarrelled for the first time, 
and a little tiff separated us. That could not 
last. You know what a wonderful man my 
fiance is! He gave in. Now this little cloud 
has disappeared.” 

“What was this whim, my darling child?” 

“You will scold me. I had asked the King to 
sacrifice his beard and mustache for my sake, 
as I thought it would be infinitely more becom¬ 
ing to him.” 


198 


THE PRINCESS 


“Is it possible? What real childishness! 
And did he do it?” 

“Yes, little Mother. Come and see how 
well it suits him.” 

Marie Nicolaevna hastened in to see her 
august son-in-law, uttered childish exclamations 
of delight and declared that he looked ten 
years younger, and flew to announce the news 
to the entire Court. 

Some articles appeared in the newspapers 
concerning this touching, intimate event. The 
official photographer quickly made a new por¬ 
trait of the sovereign which the illustrated 
magazines reproduced, accompanied by flat¬ 
tering comments. All the country agreed that 
they thought Michel’s head not only looked 
handsomer this way, but that it expressed more 
force of character. This anxiety to obey the 
future Queen moved the women of Georgevia 
to tears, and was the cause of many poor hus¬ 
bands hearing this repeated more than a hun¬ 
dred times: “You would never have done a 
thing like that!” In short, the King won there¬ 
by new popularity. 

Everyone was happy, especially Pierre Du- 
castel, who, each day, put himself at the head 


AND THE CLOWNS 199 


of the popular masses who came to hail their 
monarch. When the latter appeared on the 
Palace balcony with the smiling Princess, the 
good fellow wept for joy, and that obliged him 
to keep wiping the glasses of his blue spectacles. 


CHAPTER X 

The 20th of April, 1921. A Feast day, a 
day of joy, which will always remain memor¬ 
able in the History of Georgevia. 

From daybreak the troops had stationed 
themselves in front of the Royal Palace, and 
all along the main street leading to the Ca¬ 
thedral, whose gilded dome crowned by the 
double orthodox cross shone under the radiant 
beams of a brilliant sun. 

Behind the lines of soldiers, a compact crowd 
of variegated colored costumes waited patient¬ 
ly, eating oranges or occasionally refreshing 
themselves at the lemonade urns which the 
vendors carried around on their backs. The 
delegations were massing themselves at their 
designated posts; old wounded fighters from 
the world-war, Christian Societies, Israelite 
communities, Musulman peasants, children 
200 


AND THE CLOWNS 201 


from both secular and religious schools, sail¬ 
ors, the Chamber of Commerce, athletic socie¬ 
ties, school teachers, judges, lawyers, notaries, 
etc., etc. 

Suddenly, at half past ten, very punctually, 
the batteries placed on the neighboring hills 
and the war-ships in the harbor, commenced 
firing the official salutes, and the expected pro¬ 
cession made its appearance. 

A squadron of red Cossacks mounted on 
black horses led. 

Behind, came the General in command of 
Tcharkowla followed by his staff, a group of 
field batteries with their cannon decorated with 
garlands of flowers, batallions of the princi¬ 
pal regiments of the infantry, then, preceded 
by their dragomans, the carriages of the pleni¬ 
potentiary ministers and consuls from foreign 
States, then the former Regent, now the Grand 
Chancellor of Georgevia, carrying the royal 
banner, his horse caracoling in front of a group 
of princes and barons dressed in the old na¬ 
tional costume, and finally, escorted by the 
Cossacks of the Guard, black on white horses, 
the Court carriages moving under a shower of 
flowers. In the first was the Princess Olga 


202 


THE PRINCESS 


smiling graciously at the crowd, and the Grand 
Duchess Marie, who bowed to the right and 
left as if the wishes and acclamations were 
addressed to her. In front of them sat Count¬ 
ess Orchapoff, red as a peony, and General 
Kameniski crushed under a beplumed helmet 
and much hampered by an enormous sword 
that he did not know where to put, so as not to 
get it in the way of the future Queen. 

The King, with Dobrowski facing him, oc¬ 
cupied the second carriage. He wore with 
elegance a General’s costume, across which 
was the “Cordon” of the order of Saint Nich¬ 
olas, and waved his hand to the delirious popu¬ 
lace, from which came cries in volleys of “Long 
live Michel I,” “Long live the King,” “Long 
life to our Father.” 

At the entrance to the Cathedral, the clergy 
with mitres studded with precious stones, their 
stoles and chasubles embroidered in silver and 
gold, and holding venerable ikons in cloths of 
silk, awaited the sovereigns. 

The Archimandrite raised the King who had 
knelt, then led him by the hand to the chancel 
where the monarch placed himself, accompan¬ 
ied by Olga Alexandrowna, under a dais of 


AND THE CLOWNS 203 


red velvet, and the ceremony commenced, the 
two ceremonies, to speak more exactly; that of 
the marriage and that of the crowning. 

Our little Princess was living through her 
beautiful dream. She was, at last in the sump¬ 
tuous church all sparkling with lights, in. the 
midst of clouds of incense, amid the harmoni¬ 
ous peals sent forth over the aristocratic as¬ 
sembly by the sonorous organ. It was truly 
with a transport of joy that she pronounced 
the sacramental “Yes.” 

The rings exchanged, the Archimandrite 
celebrated Mass, then took, after having 
blessed them, the crowns that were on the altar. 

Michel had risen; he came in front of the 
prelate, bowed under the benediction, and tak¬ 
ing the royal crown, placed it between the 
hands of the Princess Olga, before whom he 
slowly knelt, indicating in this manner that he 
wished to be crowned by her alone. 

This pretty gesture moved the respectfully 
silent congregation. All the glances were fixed 
on the young girl, and all eyes filled with tears 
when they saw her gently place the emblem of 
power on Michel’s head, then allow her two 


204 


THE PRINCESS 


hands to glide with the same movement down 
the King’s face in a loving caress. 

Michel rose, triumphant, and, in his turn, 
crowned her who was to unite her life with his. 

The vast nave of the church resounded then 
with enthusiastic acclamations. But silence was 
once more established when, up above, in the 
choir of the organist, a violin played the melody 
dedicated to the Princess Olga. 

It was Michel Provinkoff who with a hand 
trembling with emotion, was saluting the clown 
Michalis with his bow. 


At last, standing on the highest step of the 
altar, the Archimandrite spoke. 

He was a majestic old man with thin hair, 
whose full white beard covered his chest and 
stomach. He had, all over the country, a great 
reputation for wisdom and holiness. They 
even said that he conversed with God himself 
during the long retreats that he made twice a 
year in the monastery Saint George built on an 
immense rocky boulder, to which one ascends 
by means of a basket hoisted by a pulley. 

He spoke. 


AND THE CLOWNS 205 


At first he conveyed to the newly married 
couple the ardent wishes formed for them by 
the Georgevian people, touched by the con¬ 
stancy and the ardor of their magnificent love, 
that unique love which never despairs in spite 
of trials and the cruellest of separations. He 
enumerated in excellent terms the virtues and 
graces of Her Very Gracious Majesty, the 
Queen Olga, evoked the noble face of the 
Grand Duke Alexander Dimitrievitch, Ata¬ 
man of the Cossacks of Adour, without, how¬ 
ever, speaking of his death, praised the energy, 
the courage, and the admirable “sang-froid” 
of the Grand Duchess Marie, and knew, with 
tact, in well chosen words, how to recall the 
moving story of the moujik or, at least, the 
official version established after numerous vari¬ 
ations, by Marie Nicolaevna herself. 

This being done, he undertook the praise or 
rather the exaltation of Michel I, King of 
Georgevia. 

His voice rose, his gestures became more 
expansive, and it was with an almost sacred 
emotion that he cried out: 

“As for you, Sire, you nobly continue a long 
tradition of honor and duty. After having 


206 


THE PRINCESS 


borne with heroic heart, the physical and moral 
sufferings that it has pleased Providence, whose 
designs are impenetrable, to impose upon you, 
after having sounded without ever weakening, 
the depths of human misery, you have at last 
come back to the throne of your fathers, re¬ 
called by the love of your subjects who have 
been deprived only too long of their true 
leader. 

“Formerly, faithful to the vow which has 
for centuries bound your august family to the 
Czar of Russia (may Our Lord grant him 
eternal happiness) you directed with wisdom 
our little country in the general harmony of the 
empire. Now that it finds itself separated from 
that great sister nation plunged into misery 
and anarchy by a band of unscrupulous adven¬ 
turers, you have, with a deep sense of the ne¬ 
cessities of the moment, created a new govern¬ 
ment, assuring our people of liberty through 
established order and discipline. Conscious of 
the duties that God has imposed upon you from 
your birth, you consecrate all your prodigious 
intelligence, your untiring activity, the re¬ 
sources of your infinite goodness to the happi¬ 
ness of the country over which the all-powerful 


AND THE CLOWNS 207 


God has delegated you the right of command. 
You wished that your personal happiness be 
assured only after that of the State, and it is 
owing to that, Sire, that we recognize in you 
the truly elect of the Creator. 

“Ah! before the undeniable example that 
Your Majesty gives, how those theories of the 
fools who deny the divine nature of royalty 
crumble piteously, how puerile do these men 
appear who are not willing to admit the reality 
of atavisim and the strength of tradition! 

“Without detracting in the slightest from 
your personal merits, Sire, you will permit me 
to ask the world if Your Majesty would be 
what you are without the long line of fore¬ 
fathers that have preceded you, without your 
venerable father who, for thirty years, gov¬ 
erned Georgevia, wisely avoiding all the things 
that might have become memorable, without 
your unforgettable grand-father who, during 
the Crimean war, bore defeat nobly, knowing, 
like the celebrated Roman, how never to 
despair of the country, without your great¬ 
grandfather, who had the honor of assisting, 
by the side of the Czar Alexander, at the 
crushing of the French usurper named Na- 


208 


THE PRINCESS 


poleon, without your great-great-grandfather, 
whose exceptional merits were savoured and 
appreciated by the Great Catherine. . . But, I 
must stop, Sire, for it would take me hours 
and hours to complete the catalogue of glories 
belonging to your illustrious family. You are 
the result of all the merits and of all the 
experiences of all that nobility. That is why 
Your Majesty handles with such ease the bur¬ 
den of power, so heavy in inexperienced hands. 

“May Christ, before whom you are kneeling 
at this moment grant Your Majesty a son 
worthy of you, worthy of all the Provinkoffs, 
to continue to the end of the centuries the beau¬ 
tiful royal tradition, and so that Georgevia 
may be ever preserved from Republican uto¬ 
pias. “Amen.” 


THE END 



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